...tonight at twelve o'clock on New Year's Eve, plowing through a blizzard,
they came in, these people who had more interest in bringing to a
conclusion, or starting anew, a useful undertaking than stunning themselves
with vodka, mindlessly kicking with their legs, playing charades, and
practicing flirtations in various degrees of frivolity. Here came people who
would rather be with each other than anywhere else, who couldn't stand any
kind of Sunday, because they were bored on Sunday. They were magi, Men with
a capital M, and their motto was "Monday begins on Saturday." True, they
knew an incantation or two, knew how to turn water into wine, and any one of
them would not find it difficult to feed a thousand with five loaves. But
they were not magi for that. That was chaff, outer tinsel. They were magi
because they had a tremendous knowledge, so much indeed that quantity had
finally been transmuted into quality, and they had come into a different
relationship with the world than ordinary people.
Arkady Stugatsky, Boris Strugatsky
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Following in a wonderful tradition, a Prime New Year's Contest is running right now on snarknews.info. The name "Prime" is a Russian pun, as the russian word "Простой" translates both as "simple" and "prime", and this contest includes problems that were given at other programming contests in 2012 but have NOT been solved by anyone. Getting at least one problem accepted there is a great achievement.
The direct link to log into the contest is http://acm.math.spbu.ru:17249/~ejudge/team.cgi?contest_id=13, and you need an Open Cup login to participate. If you don't have one, you can email new.opencup[guess what]gmail[guess what]com asking for one. The contest ends on January 10.