Month: October 2007

Here’s another New York Times gem, “Liberal Base Proves Trying to Democrats”

The first thing that comes to mind is where’s the other article? The one talking about how the complete nutjobs on the right are such a pain to the GOP? Anyhow, so most of the article is about liberal idiots who think Barney Frank isn’t gay enough, or don’t like Pelosi’s alleged hypocrisy about the farm bill.

And then they slide this little nugget in:

The tension between Democratic lawmakers and their base has been most visible on the Iraq war, where the insistence by some of the most outspoken antiwar groups on setting hard deadlines for the withdrawal of American troops has often handcuffed Senate Democrats trying to reach a bipartisan deal on legislation to change the war strategy.

The majority of the country wants to end the Iraq war, and get us out. A pretty big majority. The majority want hard deadlines. This is what’s “trying” to the Democrats? That implies carrying out the wishes of the country is an annoyance.

This is where the pressure comes from. Not the liberal base, the entire frickin’ country! Honestly, how hard is this to figure out?

I didn’t get one bite on my old TiVo. Not one inquiry about a DVD player in perfect working condition. So when I needed to get rid of some flagstones that have been laying around the house for years, I put them in the free section.

In less the 24 hours, I have had 46 people write about these. I guess I should have charged for them!

Update: In the 3 minutes it took me to write this, there have been two more inquiries. Wow.

This machine is evil. This whole article just scared the living bejeezus out of me.

A square transmitter as big as a plasma TV screen is mounted on the back of a Jeep.

When turned on, it emits an invisible, focused beam of radiation – similar to the microwaves in a domestic cooker – that are tuned to a precise frequency to stimulate human nerve endings.

It can throw a wave of agony nearly half a mile.

The agony the Raytheon gun inflicts is probably equal to anything in a torture chamber – these waves are tuned to a frequency exactly designed to stimulate the pain nerves.

I couldn’t hold my finger next to the device for more than a fraction of a second. I could make the pain stop, but what if my finger had been strapped to the machine?

Dr John Wood, a biologist at UCL and an expert in the way the brain perceives pain, is horrified by the new pain weapons.

“They are so obviously useful as torture instruments,” he says.

“It is ethically dubious to say they are useful for crowd control when they will obviously be used by unscrupulous people for torture.”

We use the word “medieval” as shorthand for brutality. The truth is that new technology makes racks look benign.

Today at work I received an executive summary. It was 44 pages. I wonder how long the non-executive summary is.

Wow. What a fantastic tournament. Something like 20 hours of TV coverage, and I enjoyed every minute of it. If you enjoy poker at all, there’s nothing like the big one. What other tournament requires you to beat over 6,000 other players to win? Where you can win over $8,000,000? Where the qualification for entry isn’t your track record, the draft, or qualifying rounds; all it takes is $10,000. I’m still not sure if pokers a sport, but in it’s own way, the WSOP is greater than NCAA finals, the Superbowl, or the World Cup.

Now we finally know the winner. (Actually, we’ve known the winner for month, I’ve just been in a self-imposed poker media blackout so I could see it happen on TV.) Jerry Yang. Frickin’ amateurs! Now Jerry Yang is obviously a better player than Chris Moneymaker. But he’s also obviously worse than Raymer, Haschem, or Gold. I have to give him a lot of credit for this feat, but at the same time you can’t ignore the role of luck. Once at the final table, he went from one of the pack to building an astronomical chip lead mainly by getting great cards four or five hands in a row. He did not play particularly well at the final table. He read his opponent successfully about 50% of the time, in other words he didn’t read his opponent at all. But with that chip advantage it didn’t matter. Kravchenko beat him four all-ins in a row, but Yang only needed to win one. When he finally did, he got all his money back and then some. That’s how it goes.

I just found the hand-by-hand replay. On TV, it looks like heads-up play is decided after the first hand, but it was actually hand 36.

Best reason to be athiest:
Yang and Rahme are all-in, waiting for the last cards that will decide their fate. Rahme’s wife is shrieking to god praising his name hoping for the right cards, while Yang is babbling about the miracles and proving his faith for you O Lord. It must have been working, because my reaction was “Jesus Christ!”. The sight of the two of them praying as hard as they could was sickening. First of all, it’s idiotic. Clearly the Lord can’t answer both their prayers, do you really think he’s deciding whether the next card will be a queen by who prays the best, by which player is most worthy? Second, it’s gambling. Last I checked, this was a sin. Third, the odds were 19 to 1 at that point. God doesn’t really need to intervene at that point. Fourth, the loser gets over $3,000,000 at that point. C’mon!

Best reason to invite all the amateurs:
The two finalists were both refugees, one from Cambodia, one from Laos. Both of them were going to use a good deal of their winnings to help out their native countries. No getting around it, that’s nice, that’s refreshing. Pros don’t have that mentality, or they don’t talk about it during tourney time.

Pete Townshend: Dancing Machine!

This guy thought his chi or something would protect him when he sliced himself with a sword. He was wrong.

Other People…

The Republican Party, known since the late 19th century as the party of business, is losing its lock on that title. Their irresponsible fiscal policies is driving big business away.

Rice Paddy Art (growing and harvesting)

A Beautiful Gold-digger gets an Honest Reply from Wall Street

Peter Sellers gives a primer on British accents.

Funny and clever math test answers

Jon Stewart had Chris Matthews on the other day to talk about his new book, “Life’s a Campaign”, and it got a little heated.

The Daily Show billed the clip (click to watch it)as “Jon Stewart gives Chris Matthews the worst interview of his life”. Andrew Sullivan referred to it as a savaging. It was #4 on Reddit. It got callouts from Tapped and others. Ha, watch Chris Matthews finally get taken down!

Only, it seems all of them missed the point. Stewart’s main criticism is that life is not a campaign. Campaigns are about lying and artifice, life is not. Matthews book is about using campaign techniques to achieve your goals. Whether your goals are good or bad is your own problem, he’s just showing you some tools to help. Objectives and tactics are completely different things.

Countless authors have written books in the same style. Stewart mentioned The Prince. I thought of How to Win Friends & Influence People. Or any of the hundreds of books on negotiation, The 7 Successful habits etc. etc. etc. ad nauseum. At worst, these books are amoral (not immoral), they will not make your life sad and depressed, as Jon said.

(credit to Jabley for this find)

In the many forms I had to sign to buy the car, there was one odd checkbox:

If you received a survey asking for your rating of your customer experience buying a car from us, would you rate us as “Excellent”? [Yes / No]

This is a terrible methodology. You can’t find out what people think by asking them what they will say. Not only do people change their minds, but it’s blatantly pre-selecting a sample. The salesperson it was just to make sure that they gave excellent service. I said they did, but I wasn’t going to check anything saying that, it defeated the point of a survey. She was pretty annoyed.

You can’t have your cake and eat it too. If a survey is supposed to be an unbiased measure, then you can’t preselect people. If it’s really for the dealership to make sure that they did a great job, it’s not a survey.

Later, I discovered interesting information that cleared it all up for me.

After purchasing a car, customers typically receive a letter or a phone call asking for their opinion of their overall experience with a dealership. Did you receive something in the mail after you bought your last new car?? J.D. Power & Associates is a well-known company that frequently conducts this research. J.D. Power & Associates has been known to send out a survey after a car sale that includes a $1 bill to elicit your participation. Low and behold, the results of these surveys determine the direction of dealerships’ business in the future.

These surveys also help determine how many cars the OEM will give to the dealership, and what incentives the OEM offers to the dealer. I was not aware that an OEM could have an incentive program with one particular dealer in an area that would never be disclosed. Interesting!

Us: No, dinosaurs aren’t monsters. Dinosaurs were real long ago. Now they are extinct.
Him: So the dinosaurs are all in heaven? The dinosaurs are in heaven. How do they fit? Maybe only the tops of their heads are in heaven, because they’re so big. A Tyrannosaurus wouldn’t fit at all. He would eat Jesus. I don’t like that dinosaur because he eats Jesus. He should be in jail. Why are dinosaurs in heaven if they eat Jesus?
Us: Good question. Maybe dinosaurs have their own heaven.
Him: Oh! Then all the dinosaurs would be there! Where is dinosaur heaven?
Us: Um… where is… um… hey, we’re almost home!
Him: I’ll bet it’s to the left. And they have someone who conducts dinosaur heaven. Is there a dinosaur Jesus?
Us: We’re home! Everyone out!

Here’s another one a few days later, after we let him have one toy at a garage sale.
Him: How long can I keep this for?
Us: Forever, it yours now.
Him: Forever!?
Us: Yes, we bought it.
Him: Forever? Even after I die? I can play with this after I die? I hope they let you take toys to heaven. I want to play with this toy in heaven!