Two Out of Three Ain't Bad

Debbie says she just heard this on the radio, on All Things Considered.

George W. Bush speaking at a rally in Ohio:

A president must surround himself with smart, competent people who are not afraid to speak their minds.

I have surrounded myself with smart, competent people.

Surprise!

John Solomon of the Associated Press sez:

The FBI has begun investigating whether the Pentagon improperly awarded no-bid contracts to Halliburton Co., seeking an interview with a top Army contracting officer and collecting documents from several government offices.

The line of inquiry expands an earlier FBI investigation into whether Halliburton overcharged taxpayers for fuel in Iraq, and it elevates to a criminal matter the election-year question of whether the Bush administration showed favoritism to Vice President Dick Cheney's former company.

Isn't it curious quite how many of the October Surprises are breaking our way?

(Via Talking Points Memo

Bush Endorses Kerry

Via Associated Press:

"A political candidate who jumps to conclusions without knowing the facts is not a person you want as your commander in chief," Bush told supporters at an airport rally.

Not Clear on the Concept Dept.

Charlie Stross is in a high dudgeon:

Attention Livejournal users

Some time ago somebody set up an unauthorized Livejournal feed from my weblog.

This is annoying to me because I don't administer it and can't update it. So when I moved my blog, four weeks ago, the LJ feed broke. Now I've moved the DNS for my server over, the LJ feed is barfing up a months' worth of my articles and people are complaining to me.

If you use LJ to track my blog, stop it. Instead, you can grab an RSS feed from here.

If you created the LJ feed, please delete it. Thank you.

We now return to our usual scheduled program ...

Umm, Charlie? If you don't want people to syndicate your blog, don't hand them an RSS feed. It's like linking to a page: if you don't want outsiders to link to a Web page, don't put it up on the Web.

This is just about as dumb as saying "You can use Radio UserLand to read my blog, but not BlogLines."

Worldwork Class in Berkeley, 11/10-12/15/04

Transforming Conflict into Community and Enemies into Allies

Conflict, for better or worse, is a fact of life. Our beautiful country is divided along political, racial, and economic lines. Our exquisite world is torn by war and injustice. Our loving relationships are punctuated with stress and tension. How can we stand up for what we feel is right without becoming the thing we are fighting against? How can we facilitate when a conflict is painful and complex?

Worldwork invites and values all points of view, as well as the emotional reality of conflict situations. This follows the belief that every position should have a voice, and that marginalized views and communication styles sometimes need support in order to be heard. The inherent wisdom of a group or community emerges when all parts are expressed and have a chance to interact. The same dynamics that create conflict, when handled with awareness, can create understanding, reconciliation, and community.

In this series of classes, we will learn about some of the dynamics that cause conflicts to cycle and perpetuate. We will directly address and work with issues that are present among the participants, as well as world issues, in order to learn more about how to work with conflicts in general. In this way, we will get a chance to practice powerful and effective tools that can help us to create intimacy, community, and social change.

TIME: 7pm to 10pm

DATES: Wednesdays Nov 10, 17, Dec 1, 8, 15

COST: $20 per class (Need-based fees considered)

CONTACT: Lane (510) 558-8805

WHERE: 1452 Cornell Avenue. Berkeley (Please park in lot across street)

All are welcome to the first class. Commitment required after first class.

WORLDWORK offers powerful and effective tools that can help us to work toward wholeness, well-being, social justice, and community. Developed by Arnold Mindell, Ph.D. (author of Sitting in the Fire, Dreambody, etc.) and his colleagues from around the world, Worldwork is based on a trust that even the most disturbing experiences – including physical illness, conflicts and world issues – can lead us in the direction of change, growth, and connection.

LANE ARYE, Ph.D. is an internationally known Process Worker and Worldworker. In the Balkans, he co-led a UN funded project working with Serbs, Croats, and Muslims on ethnic tension, war-related trauma, and community building. Lane has also worked with conflicts between high-caste and low-caste Hindus from India, anti-Semitism in Germany and Poland, as well as racism, sexism, nationalism, homophobia, and class issues in the US and Europe. Author of Unintentional Music: Unleashing Your Deepest Creativity, Lane lives with his wife, Lecia, and has a private practice in Berkeley and San Rafael.

Bill Gibson Blogging Again

Bill Gibson is no longer no longer blogging.

Bill writes:

Why?

Because the United States currently has, as Jack Womack so succintly puts it, a president who makes Richard Nixon look like Abraham Lincoln.

And because, as the Spanish philospher Unamuno said, "At times, to be silent is to lie."

(via boingboing)

Loni Hancock Has a Blog

State Assemblywoman Loni Hancock, the Democrat from District 14 (including Emeryville, Berkeley, Albany, El Cerrito, Richmond, San Pablo, Orinda, Lafayette, Moraga, and parts of Oakland) has just started a blog on Blogspot. I don't actually live in District 14; my neighborhood is gerrymandered out of the district.

It is brand-new, and so far it is all about the proposed expansion of Casino San Pablo from a minor cardroom into a giant Vegas-style casino.

I wonder how long it will be before the freepers find it?

(via SFGate)

Really Big Bet Poker

It's just talk so far, but it might turn out to be the biggest poker game the world has yet seen.

Last May, Texas banker Andy Beal played in a $100,000-$200,000 limit hold'em game at Bellagio. Apparently, he is piqued about "fish stories" about that game that appeared in the New York Daily News. In response, Beal issued a challenge, printed in the pages of Card Player, to Doyle Brunson, Chip Reese, Todd Brunson, Jennifer Harman, Howard Lederer, Chau Giang, Barry Greenstein, Ted Forrest, Gus Hansen, Lee Salem, John Hennigan, Ming La, Lyle Berman, Phil Ivey, Johnny Chan, and Hamid Dastmalchi:

Call me naïve (I've been called worse), but I believe that I am the favorite in a heads-up limit high-stakes game against most of you. For the record, I challenge you to put up or shut up about your "professional play." Come to Dallas and play me for four hours a day and I will play until one of us runs out of money or cries uncle. If your play is so great and your wins have been as large as you claim, you should have plenty of bankroll and be jumping at the chance to come and play another $100,000-$200,000 game and win a lot more money. I should add that you can bring your own independent dealers and your own cards, and can play in a different location of your choice every day if you wish. You should provide a slate of any six or more of the above players and I will pick from your slate who plays. Observers should be free to attend in order to record exactly what happens at this game, so it won't turn into another fisherman's story.

Observers may not realize, wrote Paul Phillips about this challenge, that this is a poorly disguised attempt to bust the corporation via variance. . ("The corporation" is the syndicate of players who pooled their money to take Beal on at Bellagio.) That is to say, Beal might be using his deep pockets as a weapon against the corporation: he might not have an edge in the game, but he can take them on without risk of ruin. The corporation players, on the other hand, might be risking everything they have for the sake of their competitive advantage.

Doyle Brunson has just responded to Beal's throwing of the gauntlet by throwing down a gauntlet of his own:

As far as your challenge goes, we concede that you have more money than all of us put together. So, why would we want to get into a $100,000-$200,000 game in which we would be underfunded? We are pros, and we know the disadvantage of this. So, here is what we propose:

1. We will raise a $40 million bankroll and post it along with yours. (Everything is contingent on raising the money, but I think it is very realistic that we can expand and raise it.)

2. We will play 30K-60K. If either side loses half of its post-up money, it can raise the stakes to $50,000-$100,000. There is an old axiom that applies here: Get out the way you got in!

3. We will choose who plays and when.

4. We prefer to play in Vegas, the gambling capital of the world. Most of us live here, and what would we do in Dallas when we weren't playing? This is negotiable. The first three points aren't.

Andy, I'm chuckling as I write this closing paragraph. If Bill Gates came to Dallas and wanted to flip coins for $100 million per flip for four hours a day until one of you ran out of money or cried uncle, would you do it? My money says you would decline.

Yes, $30K-$60K (and $50K-$100K) is a smaller betting limit than $100K-$200K. But an 80-million-dollar freezeout ... !

Part of me is saying "wow!" And another part of me is thinking that $40 million is a lot of money to risk on what amounts to a pissing contest, and maybe there are better things to do with that money.

Revenge of the Backlist

Over at Wired is an astonishing article about the unintended consequences of online delivery of entertainment content. It's all the more astonishing because it's written by Wired's editor-in-chief, Chris Anderson. (Who'da thunk that the lead editor of the chief bastion of fatuous New Economy cheerleading would come out with something so substantial and important?) The article is called The Long Tail.

An analysis of the sales data and trends from [Amazon.com, Netflix, iTunes Music Store, and Rhapsody] and others like them shows that the emerging digital entertainment economy is going to be radically different from today's mass market. If the 20th-century entertainment industry was about hits, the 21st will be equally about misses.

For too long we've been suffering the tyranny of lowest-common-denominator fare, subjected to brain-dead summer blockbusters and manufactured pop. Why? Economics. Many of our assumptions about popular taste are actually artifacts of poor supply-and-demand matching - a market response to inefficient distribution.

The article opens with:

In 1988, a British mountain climber named Joe Simpson wrote a book called Touching the Void, a harrowing account of near-death in the Peruvian Andes. It got good reviews but, only a modest success, it was soon forgotten. Then, a decade later, a strange thing happened. Jon Krakauer wrote Into Thin Air, another book about a mountain-climbing tragedy, which became a publishing sensation. Suddenly Touching the Void started to sell again.

Random House rushed out a new edition to keep up with demand. Booksellers began to promote it next to their Into Thin Air displays, and sales rose further. A revised paperback edition, which came out in January, spent 14 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. That same month, IFC Films released a docudrama of the story to critical acclaim. Now Touching the Void outsells Into Thin Air more than two to one.

What happened? In short, Amazon.com recommendations. The online bookseller's software noted patterns in buying behavior and suggested that readers who liked Into Thin Air would also like Touching the Void. People took the suggestion, agreed wholeheartedly, wrote rhapsodic reviews. More sales, more algorithm-fueled recommendations, and the positive feedback loop kicked in.

Other tasty quotes:

Combine enough nonhits on the Long Tail and you've got a market bigger than the hits. Take books: The average Barnes & Noble carries 130,000 titles. Yet more than half of Amazon's book sales come from outside its top 130,000 titles. Consider the implication: If the Amazon statistics are any guide, the market for books that are not even sold in the average bookstore is larger than the market for those that are (see "Anatomy of the Long Tail"). ...

The same is true for all other aspects of the entertainment business, to one degree or another. Just compare online and offline businesses: The average Blockbuster carries fewer than 3,000 DVDs. Yet a fifth of Netflix rentals are outside its top 3,000 titles. Rhapsody streams more songs each month beyond its top 10,000 than it does its top 10,000. In each case, the market that lies outside the reach of the physical retailer is big and getting bigger. ...

[T]he success of Netflix, Amazon, and the commercial music services shows that you need both ends of the curve. Their huge libraries of less-mainstream fare set them apart, but hits still matter in attracting consumers in the first place. Great Long Tail businesses can then guide consumers further afield by following the contours of their likes and dislikes, easing their exploration of the unknown.

For instance, the front screen of Rhapsody features Britney Spears, unsurprisingly. Next to the listings of her work is a box of "similar artists." Among them is Pink. If you click on that and are pleased with what you hear, you may do the same for Pink's similar artists, which include No Doubt. And on No Doubt's page, the list includes a few "followers" and "influencers," the last of which includes the Selecter, a 1980s ska band from Coventry, England. In three clicks, Rhapsody may have enticed a Britney Spears fan to try an album that can hardly be found in a record store.

Rhapsody does this with a combination of human editors and genre guides. But Netflix, where 60 percent of rentals come from recommendations, and Amazon do this with collaborative filtering, which uses the browsing and purchasing patterns of users to guide those who follow them ("Customers who bought this also bought ..."). In each, the aim is the same: Use recommendations to drive demand down the Long Tail.

(via Electrolite)

On the Importance of Knowing What's Important

Scott Marley points us to Sunday's column by Miss Manners [scroll to the bottom of page 2]:

Dear Miss Manners:

On only a few days' notice, I was married in February to a wonderful woman. Having not had time to properly invite friends and family to our nuptials, and since we already had been living together for 14 years, we didn't expect to receive gifts.

Nevertheless, we did receive many wonderful cards and calls of congratulations, and a few relatives did send us thoughtful gifts. Of course we promptly wrote them thank-you notes and telephoned them to show our sincere appreciation. Unfortunately, a decision by the California Supreme Court voided our marriage, along with the marriages of approximately 4,000 other same-gender couples.

What is the proper etiquette with respect to keeping or returning these special gifts now that the court has forced us to untie the knot?

Wedding presents may be properly accepted during the couple's engagement, and need only be returned if they no longer wish to be married. You have, after all, met Miss Manners's basic and non-negotiable requirement: You wrote thank-you letters.

EX-cellent!

I've resisted the temptation to put up screenshots of Dick Cheney and John Edwards meeting that remind us all of Cheney's ongoing pathological disregard of truth.

But the temptation to post this image, appearing on From Here to Obscurity, is much too strong:

(via skippy and boingboing)

Eldritch Potter

The redoubtable Roz Kaveny points us to the LiveJournal of ClueGirl, who is delving in questions that humankind perhaps was not meant to consider:

My Id, after spending all day yesterday in a profound sulk, has just gone and dug something truly horrific out of its toybox to play with. Howard Phillip Lovecraft. And it gets worse, the mad little wretch's other fist is still stuffed with Harry Potter, and it's bashing them together while chortling with malevolent glee, and...

*Shudders*

And they're starting to fit!

Let's begin with Professor Snape, shall we? Yeah, Snape – slightly oily; BIG hooked nose; ill favored; named 'Severus" (which is an ancient Egyptian name, and I DO mean ancient); sallow of the sort which would be swarthy if he ever saw the sun, but because he spends all his time in the chill depths of the earth, is just yellowish; dead brilliant with bubbling, questionable substances; and with a mind slippery enough to keep Voldemort confunded perpetually? That's the one. He's Nyarlathotep – the one and only SANE Great Old One. The Man ... er... Thing With The Plan. The one who dictated the Necronomicon to old Al Azif as he was slowly going bananas from just the words on the page. Butler to the Greater Gods, facilitator to many of their nefarious plans; ...

And did anyone else happen to notice that Little Haggleton seemed to greatly resemble a town on the other side of the pond, name of Innsmouth? Perhaps Greater Haggleton is some twelve miles out off the coast, where the summer homes are? It would explain a few things about Our Tom, it would.

Read the rest.

Anna Vargo Recovering From Surgery

Avedon Carol passes on the word that Anna Vargo has just had cancer surgery this week. The procedure went well, and she is doing as best as can be expected for someone recovering from major abdominal surgery.

More information is available at Anna's page on CaringBridge, including a guestbook where friends, family, and others who care can leave messages and good wishes.