MATHENY:  DBL. Perhaps partner will do something intelligent. A red-suit cuebid might be interpreted as showing rather than asking.

Oh no, not a third meaning for double! I take it that doing something intelligent may include passing. I'm just hoping I can do something intelligent in the scoring, but I doubt it.

MERRITT:  3H. Going somewhere, just not sure where.

This is the Susquehanna nuclear power plant in Salem Township PA along the Susquehanna River. Did you notice that there's smoke coming out of their chimneys, too? Well, they're not really chimneys and it's not really smoke. In the nuclear world they're called "cooling towers" and the smoke is nothing but steam, Zero carbon dioxide, zero sulphides, zero mercury, etc. Nuclear power is also a "Base Load" power so it replaces coal and other fossil fuels in the power plant hierarchy.

These plants are expensive to build, but they last 40 or 50 years, and they have zero carbon dioxide emissions. Another advantage is that Uranium, the fuel for Nuclear Power Stations, is mined all over the world -- in the USA, in the Western and Southwestern states, Montana, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, etc. --  so we don't have to import fuel from halfway around the world.

Now that I think of it, nuclear plants, the highest of the high-tech power options, and coal, the lowest of the low, have a couple of things in common: They both produce Base Load power and they both use fuel that comes from the good old USA.

Action  p;	Score	Panel	Solvers
3	100	8	26
3	100	8	5
3	80	4	12
3NT	60	1	11
Pass	40	0	1

*Forcing to game

You, South, hold  AQ8754   8   10754   AJ

The way to show a 6-card major and a 4-card minor is to bid the major twice and then the minor, but maybe the folks who made that rule weren't thinking of a Txxx minor at the time. Also, I'm curious to see if anyone tries the exotic but quite possibly correct 3C.

SPEAR:  3S. 3D would be okay in a bidding contest, but 3S is almost always better at the table, where declarer play follows the bidding and defenders appreciate any distributional info.

Walsh:  3S. Definitely confirming six. Not a very solid six, but the alternatives (3D? 3NT?) look worse.

MATHENY:  3S. I need to show the sixth spade.

BRIDGE BARON:  3S. Bridge Baron considers the 2S rebid as not guaranteeing six spades.

I don't get it. As far as I know, you showed six spades when you bid 2S. Bidding 3S now shows either a 7-cd suit or a substantially better 6-shooter.

FASHINGBAUER:  3NT. Don't want to bid that anemic diamond suit.

It sounds like partner is fishing for something with his 2NT bid, but I don't think 3NT is it.

KESSLER:  3D. Sorry the diamonds aren't better, but partner now knows I am 6-4 and can make an intelligent decision.

DODD:  3D. This used to be the way to show a weak 6-4, so what's the problem? The spade suit is nowhere near the quality needed to rebid it again.

FELDHEIM:  3D. For those who choose the enigmatic 3C, Torquemada would be proud of you.

Well, I'd rather have him with me than against me!

Excellent, I'll mark Jim down for half a 3C bid. Let's see if anyone else takes that final step. Wait a minute, here they come now!

PAULO:  3C. Showing support and allowing partner to choose our best strain.

KAPLAN:  3C. This may be a notrump hand; it just doesn't look that way to me. If partner continues with 3NT after 3C, fine. At least he was warned.

PAVLICEK:  3C. Three spades would overstate my suit quality, and 3D portends a mouse in a Swiss cheese factory, so 3C is a nice compromise to keep avenues besides notrump open. With partner unlimited, it could be just what he wants to hear, e.g., with  x  Axx  AKx  KQTxxx.

STRITE:  3C. Too soon to give up on the black suits. Even if pard has a minimum, we could easily have a fitter for slam.

We'll have to get these 3C bidders together somehow. Let's see, what's half-way between Lisboa, Portugal and Minnetonka, Minnesota? And is there a bridge club there?

This is a PV Solar Park. PV stands for Photo Voltaic, which means the kind of solar where the panels suck up the sunlight and make electricity directly from it. There's another kind of Solar that consists of large numbers of mirrors that can all be focused on the same spot, usually a spot involving boiling water and steam power generators. As with nuclear, there are no carbon dioxide emissions.

These currently aren't Base Load stations because the doggone sun keeps going down, but the fast emerging battery technology may change that. Charge up the whopping big batteries during the day and send out the power at night. And, of course, you can do a lot of things with Solar that you can't do with nuclear or coal, such as put a few solar panels on your roof and run your refrigerator and your washing machine from it, or put a solar cell in your propeller beanie to keep that massive brain of yours from overheating.

Solar has a big upside and it's growing fast. Will it be fast enough to make a big contribution to the power problems? Nobody knows yet.

Action	Score	Panel	Solvers
Pass	100	12	18
4	80	3	8
4	70	2	3
4	70	4	25
5	40	0	1

*Responsive double

You, South, hold 742   J752   AQJ   AKJ

If partner had 4+ hearts, he would have bid them instead of making the responsive double. So what's left? We'll see how the panel pries its backside out of this situation.

KESSLER:  4S. The double should deny 4 hearts, so we need to find partner-s 5-or-more-card minor.

SPEAR:  Pass. Pard is showing minors here. He would bid hearts with four.

PAVLICEK:  Pass. On a good day, the opponents will be speeding (been there, done that) and drop 500 in our shopping cart. I'm leading a trump, of course.

MERRITT:  Pass, and I lead a trump. This must be a law bid. If they have 9, we have 7. It's possible that we could hit the bullseye by bidding, but the target seems pretty small.

MATHENY:  4C. Partner is likely 1-3-4-5 or 1-3-5-4. A 4S bid would get me to the correct minor but might be too high.

WALSH:  4C. Yuck.

SIGLER:  4H. And hope partner really does have four hearts.

RABIDEAU:  4H. UGH! Since partner "can't" have more than 5 HCPs outside of hearts, I'm going to give him some chunky hearts and hope it's a playable 4-3 fit. If he's 6-5 in the minors, we'll surely hear more from him.

Assuming that partner made a mistake at his previous turn won't be good for partnership harmony, even if it happens to work out somehow on this hand. Although partner can't have 4 hearts, we could have 5 on this auction, which is what partner will expect.

This wind turbine is part of an offshore farm near Copenhagen. I was wondering why the Solar people call their giant layouts a "Park" and the Wind people call theirs a "Farm". The reason turned out to be that the first "Wind Farms" just linked up existing Windmills on various farmer's property. In a way, Wind is a Base Load power; it's in business 24 hrs/day, 7 days/wk, 365 days/yr, but there are gaps in the wind pretty much every day.

There's a big gap in Solar as well, but the difference is that Solar knows down to the second when the gap will occur and how long it will last. It's called night! Wind energy gaps can occur any time, last any length of time, and when the wind resumes it can be a delicate summer zephyr or a hurricane, but usually the weather prognosticators are in the ballpark, if not on the money.

These contraptions really aren't all that complicated. They're like a backwards house fan. Instead of the AC current turning a motor that turns fan blades that produce a breeze, it's a wind that turns the fan blades that run a generator that produces AC current. There are a few more pieces -- something that keeps the turbine pointed into the wind and a safety gadget that shuts everything down if the wind gets too high -- but it's all fairly straightforward.

Why are we putting wind turbines out to sea? The wind blows harder offshore and larger turbines can be installed. A big truck isn't big enough to carry a wind turbine, but a big cargo ship is.

Action	Score	Panel	Solvers
3	100	12	26
Pass	80	7	12
4	60	1	3
DBL	60	1	14

*Preemptive

You, South, hold  Q8765   3   A9872   AQ

Let's see, we could bid our anemic spade suit. Or we could try a takeout double, but what do we do when partner bids clubs? Or we could go with a wimpy pass. And the panel says...

WALSH:  3S. Could be a disaster, but letting opponents play 3H at matchpoints sounds like a losing proposition anyway.

WALKER:  3S. Typical matchpoint madness.

PAULO:  3S. Partner should have some values but poor shape, so I must bid.

PAVLICEK:  3S. Not pretty, but I won't go quietly, and other bids (4D, 4H) are more ghastly. Double is plausible, but the thought of hearing 4C (or 5C over 4H) is revolting. If 3S goes bad, I'll let go the SQ and draw for a straight flush.

Richard says we have a choice of three bids: ugly, ghastly, or revolting. Sounds about right.

DODD:  Pass. It didn't go 3H-Pass-Pass to me. Given the bidding, North is likely short in hearts as well, so unless I'm playing with a complete milquetoast, why would I ever stick my neck out here?

KESSLER:  Pass. I'm getting old--bidding red is just too dicey for me. If the spades were better, I would bid something. Bad spades make it way to easy for opponents to say double.

BRIDGE BARON:  Pass. Not close to acting.

Mark, I never thought you'd get that old! Maybe I'm getting old, too. I'd better go look in the mirror.

NELSON:  4H. No way a double guarantees a five-card spade suit. A Michaels bid at least shows a hand with more distribution.

Here's a Power Station that most of us are familiar with -- Hoover Dam. Completed in 1935, it spans the Colorado River near the Nevada/Arizona border. The reservoir behind it, Lake Mead, contains up to 9.28 trillion gallons of water.

Dams/Reservoirs have a couple of functions other than generating power, they supervise use of the river and allocation of water. From a Power Station point-of-view, the reservoir also acts as a kind of giant battery that can be turned on when additional power is needed.

Something that never occurred to me about hydroelectric power is the possibility of their running out of fuel, but 85 percent of the water that feeds the Colorado River water system comes from the snowpack that accumulates on the western slope of the Rocky Mountains of Wyoming, Utah, New Mexico and Colorado. In 2009, the runoff from the snow diminished drastically, but now, 2010 for me, the high precipitation levels have produced something of a recovery. I'm not sure I'm up to praying for more rain after all we've already had this year, but good luck to the Colorado River and Hoover Dam.

Action	Score	Panel	Solvers
3	100	12	29
2NT	80	5	10
Pass	70	4	14
3D	40	0	2

*Weak jump shift

You, South, hold  J1082   A2   9873   1086

Yuck. Which is worse: Passing or bidding? And if it's passing, what do we bid?

Hudson:  3C. Another misfit, but I'm afraid to leave it in. I'm hoping for  x  KQxx  Axx  KQ9xx.

SPEAR:  3C. Would gamble a Pass at Matchpoints, but betting that a confident 3C may avoid disaster at IMPS.

WALSH:  3C. Yuck again.

PAULO:  3C. I quote Edgar Kaplan's "I take out partner's takeout doubles".

KAPLAN:  3C. Ugh, I would pass - except takeout doubles are meant to be taken out.

Poor Edgar has probably been blamed for a lot of bad contracts since he said that!

KESSLER:  2NT. I am not defending a doubled part score, which we may or may not beat. I'd rather be on the wrong end of plus/minus 100 then minus 470.

DODD:  2NT ... unless North will read this as showing more strength (must confess I've never played against a pair who played this treatment), in which case 3C might the better call.

SIGLER:  2NT. Partner and East hold all the cards. Our best hope is that East can't cash too many diamond tricks early!

STRITE:  2NT. Planning to pass partner's 3C Lebensohl response.

KNIEST:  2NT. Two-way shot. This should probably be Lebensohl (good topic for discussion). Or pard might bid a real suit anyway. Can't pass at IMPs.

This Lebensohl business is a mystery to me. If you're saying that nobody wants to play in 2NT so it should be some kind of artificial takeout, I'm with you all the way. But if you're saying that in this auction we are playing Lebensohl ... we aren't. I'd say 2NT is natural and therefore invitational and the next bid the 2NTers will hear is 3NT by partner.

ATHY:  Pass. Rates to go plus if partner holds as much a stiff spade queen and values for the double.

NELSON:  Pass. I am on board for taking a positive stance with the pass. Settling for +300.

Ok, here's my favorite, Red Algae. So what is it, you ask, and why does it have anything to do with power generation? What it is is seaweed. There's been red algae floating around in all the earth's oceans for the last 500 million years or so, give or take a few million. It's supposed to be a crunchy, healthy salad ingredient and even has some promising medicinal properties that are currently being investigated such as prevention of herpes (Wow, that's a biggie!).

There are two words, or maybe it's four words, for the reason it's here among the Power stations: Bio-Ethanol and Bio-Diesel. The big problem with turning plants such as corn, soybeans and sunflower seeds into fuel is that the process uses more energy than the resulting ethanol or biodiesel generates. A second problem is that we are, as one critic put it, "burning food", by which he meant that instead of putting corn on our dinner plate next to the pork chops, we're putting it in our gas tank.

The process for making Bio-Diesel and Bio-Ethanol from Red Algae already exists and generates much higher quality fuel than corn. Red Algae is also polite enough to suck up a lot of carbon dioxide while it's growing and not emit much while it's being processed. They're still working on the farming aspects. If you want to raise Red Algae as a crop, you don't start with an empty field and a tractor. You start with a big shallow pond, or a cordoned off section of ocean, or big transparent plastic tubes that are exposed to the sun. I dunno, but I picture the big shallow pond idea as maybe being similar to farming salmon. What kind of water do we need? Is anything necessary along the lines of fertilizer in a corn field? "No" would be a wonderful answer to that question.

There's enough Red Algae in the oceans to produce enough Diesel and Ethanol to run every car and truck in the world and replace all the power plants based on natural gas or oil. Yes, it's another technology that if we had started working on it 20 years ago, the world would now be a different (and better) place. As it is, like some of the other technologies mentioned, we'll just have to see if we have enough time to get them working.

Action	Score	Panel	Solvers
DBL	100	10	26
Pass	70	2	7
5	90	8	22
6	50	1	0

*Michaels - both majors

You, South, hold A3   A4   A5   AJ86543

What's your call?

I'm sure the bid that's most misunderstood in bridge is double. Or maybe a better way to put it is that everyone understands exactly what double means in every possible auction, but they all disagree.

HUDSON:  5C. It's this or pass; double would be takeout.

KAPLAN:  5C. I may go for a number -- but no one steals from me. I might also make it if partner has Kx of clubs and the diamond king.

KNIEST:  5C. Hate those double game swings...but my teammates hate for me to bring back -800.

FELDHEIM:  5C. This could easily turn out to be -200 or -500 with +100 to +500 in view. But on the other hand, it might be a double game swing with both 4H and 5C being makeable contracts.

These 5C bids strike me as being more "phantom saves" than "double game swings." Still, one never knows, do one?

SPEAR:  DBL. Can't pass. 5C is give-away.

DODD:  DBL. Easiest problem of the set. Even though they may make or go down one when your side could make a game, there's nothing else you can even THINK of doing here-

KESSLER:  DBL. This is not for takeout -- 4NT would show the minors. You can't allow the opponents to shove you out of this auction.

MERRITT:  DBL. This seems like a worthwhile start.

PAVLICEK:  DBL. What else? A unilateral 5C seems gross with a broken suit, and I'd feel like a doormat passing with four aces. Double is strength-showing (not penalty) so maybe partner will be inspired to bid 4NT (minor takeout) with 4=1=5=3 shape.

Oh no, here's that third flavor of double again, the one where partner is supposed to do something intelligent.