Namarië

Hidden in the comments of Making Light is Tom Whitmore's announcement that The Other Change of Hobbit will be closing at the end of May this year.

This is a big deal for me, as you might expect from the passing of a community focal point, one where I found one of the great loves of my life working behind the counter. As well as finding love there, I've made friends there; worked there; had mind-changing experiences among the shelves; and spent many, many hours browsing, reading, talking, and living.

I will be greatly sorry to see the bookstore close.

At the same time, I have some understanding of what a burden the store has been to Tom and co-owner Dave Nee. Sorry as I am to see it close, I have been privately rooting for them to close it, for their own sakes, for years. I wish Tom and Dave the very best, and that having laid aside that burden, their lives will have room to become richer in the things that matter. I know that if that happens, given who they are, they cannot help but enrich the world around them as well.

An Inside Look at the World Poker Tour

Paul Phillips comments on his own appearance on last week's installment of the World Poker Tour, in which Paul won Bellagio's Five Diamond World Poker Classic.

Paul makes the telling point that the story of the TV show, although it has the same ending as the actual tournament, is different from what the participants might have thought it was:

The other misconception that's endemic is that the edited TV show represents real-time action. OK, I know people SAY that they realize that you're only seeing a very, very small percentage of the hands at the final table, but they don't appear to genuinely believe it. The editors choose hands to highlight a "story", either for the show or for a string of hands. The heads-up "story" was that Dewey was moving all-in on me every hand... even though that's not even close to true. ...

I enjoyed the show was good overall, but they left out two hands that I thought were key to the result.

1) The first orbit, Abe made a small opening raise and Gus called in the small blind. Being priced in at 5-1 I called with KJo. The flop came J32 rainbow: Gus checked, I checked, Abe bet, and we both folded. I later found out that Abe had AA that hand. I could easily have lost many more chips.

2) Heads-up, Dewey limped the button and I checked KT in the big blind. It turned out he was limping with AJ hoping I'd make a play for the pot. We ended up checking it down all the way. When I saw his hand at showdown I knew I'd dodged another bullet.

Paul comments with no little venom about the quality of the commentary on his play appearing on rec.gambling.poker or on the Two Plus Two discussion boards:

I read what commentary I could easily find. The most striking feature of the majority of it is how little effort people put into getting the facts right. What is the point of analyzing a poker situation if you're not going to take the trouble to confirm the details? Do people think that little factors like who raised whom, what the cards were, and how many chips everyone had are irrelevant filler?

Relax, Paul. Life is too short to worry about what the yammerheads are saying about you on the Internet. Besides, look on the bright side: some people's big concern about the WPT format is that people get to see how finalists play their cards. Isn't it reassuring to know that many of the people who do so are getting bad reads on you?

Alas, I didn't get to see Paul's moment of triumph. I was in Las Vegas last week, staying at the Mirage, and the Mirage doesn't include the Travel Channel among its video offerings to guests. Not to worry, though, my companion and I were able to find even more fascinating pastimes.

Roz Gets It Right, Once Again

Here's Roz Kaveny on the hand-wringing about the Israeli government's murder of Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin (scroll down past the rave review of Susanna Clarke's new novel):

It is, of course, very wrong for the Israelis to use a helicopter gunship's rockets to kill an old man in a wheelchair. What I don't see is that it is more wrong for them to do this than to use bulldozers to crush families who don't get out of the way in time or rifles to kill teenagers who are throwing rocks. ...

Politicians who condemn assassination, but not any other sort of killing, are involved in a protection of their own trade, which like other trades is a conspiracy against the public. It is cant to regard assassination as worse than other killing. Specific assassinations may be a bad thing – but we object to the killings of Martin Luther King and Gandhi precisely because they were advocates of non-violence, for whom violence came calling – but I don't see why a politician has more right in principle to be protected from violence than anyone else.

Santa Claus in a Bar Fight?

Over on Making Light, Teresa Nielsen Hayden quotes an Associated Press report on a couple in Statesboro, Georgia, who were arrested after watching Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ. The story reports that Sean Davidson and Melissa Davidson left the theater arguing over a theological point: whether, in the Holy Trinity, God the Father was human or symbolic. Once they got home, the argument escalated into violence.

The report quotes sherriff's deputy Gene McDaniel: "“Really, it was kind of a pitiful thing, to go to a movie like that and fight about it. I think they missed the point." To which Teresa responds:

Maybe they did, maybe they didn’t. They’re hardly the first people to wander into that tar pit. The night before the final balloting at the Council of Nicea, Saint Nicholas of Myra punched out Arius in a bar fight arising from a very similar argument.

Of Course It's Work-Safe! It Says So Right Here!

Avedon Carol points us to Safe for Work Porn by Edouard Levé. All the models are fully dressed in fashionable clothes fit for all but the stuffiest of workplaces. Their comportment, however, is another matter.

Don't Tell David Bratman

LOTR to Be Musical

Fresh from its runaway success at the Oscars, fantasy epic Lord of the Rings is set to hit the stage as a lavish musical, reports say.

Producers are planning to turn the book series into the most expensive musical ever seen in London, according to the Sunday Telegraph.

News of the musical version comes weeks after the final film installment of the trilogy, Return Of The King, won 11 Academy Awards.

(via Eschaton)

Jiggety-Jig

I'm home again, dog-tired, and just beginning to settle back into what we laughingly refer to around here as "normal life".

I've just scrubbed out a bunch of comment spam. I'm much obliged to the spammers for making it particularly easy to delete this time.