Who Won?

Patti Beadles played 10-20 online last night. This is what happened:

Winners and Losers

I was playing in a six-handed 10-20 holdem game online tonight while I wound down for bed.

Seat one was a revolving door – about half a dozen players came through it during the 150 or so hands that I played.

In seat two we find perhaps the second worst poker player in existence. He was very passive, his raises were reliable, and he was more than a little bit optimistic about his cards. In fact, he called more than a telemarketer.

Seats three and four were relatively solid players.

I was in seat five.

Seat six was the only guy on the planet who could play worse than seat two. He would reraise preflop with hands like 84-offsuit, three bet with J8, call with anything and nothing (including drawing dead), always raised and often capped with his draws on the flop, and was just generally hemorrhaging money.

Six kept sucking out on me for a while, but eventually I got back to even and then ahead a few hundred bucks.

Three was making money, though Two drew out on him a few times. Every time he did, Three would start swearing at him. "Stupid fucker. Your going to lose all your money. Fucking moron." Two never said anything the whole time.

Four was fairly quiet, though he would occasionally make a comment like, "very nice hand".

Six, however, was cheerful even after he was stuck over $800. When he started getting close to the felt, he quipped, "I'm going for broke."

I suggested that I would support him in that endeavor, and that it wasn't personal – it was merely my job as his opponent. I would expect the same from him. He laughed and agreed.

I told him, "you're an unusual player, and I mean that in a good way. Most players get cranky and nasty when the cards don't fall their way, but you're still joking and laughing. I respect that."

"Losing all your money isn't the worst thing that can happen to you. I lost three friends today. They were killed in a fire."

His hometown was listed as Staten Island. I made a quick trip to Google news and discovered that three NY firefighters were killed in a blaze today. "Are you a firefighter?"

"Yes."

I was stunned, and made the best sympathetic noises that I could muster, followed by, "I respect that job – my hat's off to you."

"Are you wearing a hat?"

"No, but I could go grab one just so I could take it off-- I collect them." We spent a couple minutes discussing which hat would be best for me to take off to him, and finally decided on the leather top hat.

The contrast between this guy and Three was huge. Three was being a flaming asshole because he lost a single pot, even though he was well ahead of the game overall. Six was being extraordinarily pleasant and social and never said a bad word to anyone even while he was nearly four figures in the red, not to mention three friends.

I'm sure Three finished the session with more money than Six, but if I had to pick winners and losers, I'd score it the other way.

Truth to tell, I've got a lot more of Seat Three in me than is good for either me or the game in general. It's very good to have the reasons why this isn't such a good idea illustrated in primary colors.

Violence Against Women

Researchers at the University of California, Irvine, and at the University of New Mexico have released the results of a study that purports to show that the large-scale structures of the brains of men and women are different.

In general, men have approximately 6.5 times the amount of gray matter related to general intelligence than women, and women have nearly 10 times the amount of white matter related to intelligence than men. Gray matter represents information processing centers in the brain, and white matter represents the networking of – or connections between – these processing centers.

This, according to Rex Jung, a UNM neuropsychologist and co-author of the study, may help to explain why men tend to excel in tasks requiring more local processing (like mathematics), while women tend to excel at integrating and assimilating information from distributed gray-matter regions in the brain, such as required for language facility. These two very different neurological pathways and activity centers, however, result in equivalent overall performance on broad measures of cognitive ability, such as those found on intelligence tests.

The author of the UCI press release bends over backwards to stress that "there are essentially no disparities in general intelligence between the sexes.". Nevertheless, this study is destined to become ammunition in the war between the sexes. I can easily see someone like James "SpongeDob Stickypants" Dobson framing Rex Jung's assertion quoted above as 'women's brains are suited to thinking girl-thoughts, while the brains of men help them excel at things that are more manly.'

The timing of the announcement seems like quite a coincidence to me, following on the heels of the scandal over Harvard University President Larry Summers suggesting a biological basis for the disparity between men and women in math and science careers. The paranoid in me fears that a concerted attack on the underpinnings of feminism and women's equality is under way. (I know, I know, blah blah blah Susan Faludi yadda yadda Backlash....) The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health; and the Bush-era NIH is known to be politicizing its reported research results.

Assuming that these research results are on the level, there are huge unanswered questions about whether these differences appear innately, automatically, or whether individuals' brains develop according to the use to which they are put. Since by and large women's social experiences differs from those of men, difference in brain structure may well be a consequence of that different experience. It would be worthwhile, in my opinion, doing a similar structure comparing the brain structure of (say) musicians to those of Wall Street traders, Olympic atheletes to accountants, or computer programmers to factory workers.

In the absence of such studies, and notwithstanding the tepid protests of men's and women's parity on general intelligence tests, these results will surely be used by the patriarchy to try to put women in their place.

(via boingboing)

Vox Populi

CNN headline: Poll: Nation split on Bush as uniter or divider

Indeed.

(via Talking Points Memo)

How Do You Think He Got Where He Is?

Today's San Francisco Chronicle has another in their series about the Governator's meeting with the paper's editorial board: PUMPING HIM UP: Governor's position as a top editor at a pair of bodybuilding magazines may enhance his political celebrity. Ahnold is listed as "Executive Editor" for Muscle & Fitness and Flex magazines, with "regular bylines, editorials and columns by California's Republican governor as well as a generous amount of Arnold-friendly copy."

The Chron gives Ahnold some heat about potential conflict of interest, and lots and lots of heat about drug use in the bodybuilding world. Are they surprised? The Governator admitted a long time ago to using steroids when he was a competitive bodybuilder. Anyone who didn't know that in the run-up to his election wasn't paying attention – they probably didn't know about the nude photos or the interludes with girly-men in gyms in Venice Beach, either.

I've never thought Schwarzenegger belonged in the Governor's office, and I still don't. But it seems ridiculous to me to castigate the author of The New Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding for an ongoing editorial presence in the weightlifting mags. Ahnold is responsible in part for the mainstreaming of weight training and bodybuilding, and has been since long before either his political or Hollywood careers took off. Why shouldn't he continue to do so?

Blogger Ethics

It seems to me that it is peculiar that the Ancient and Illuminated Seers of Harvard University are hosting a Conference on Blogging, Journalism and Credibility where attendance is by invitation only, when blogging is for all intents and purposes a folk art.

Whether or not the allegation that certain liberal bloggers took payola from the Dean campaign amounts to anything more than a ploy for attention by a scandalmonger that got picked up by the right-wing noise machine, it is ridiculous to have the question of blogging-for-pay at the top of the queue of ethics problems facing bloggers.

The single most important ethical issue faced by bloggers today, the one the most bloggers deal with on a day-by-day basis, is this:

If a total stranger friends my LJ, do I have to friend him or her back again?

Let's keep it real, folks.

Setting the Record Straight

Now that the Wall Street Journal has made an issue about Markos Moulitsas receiving money from the Howard Dean Campaign, the time has come for me to set my own record straight.

Since I began blogging, I have written in As I Please about the following people from whom I have received money or other consideration: Alex Alaskar, Tommy Angelo, Patti Beadles, Benny Behnen, Steve Brust, Rick Chin, Chris Claremont, Sabyl Cohen, Bonnie Damiano, "Erik" (a prop player at the Oaks Club), Danny Flores, Perry Friedman, Jamie Gillis, Charles Haynes, Phil Hellmuth, Karina Jett, Lee Jones, "Kim," Steve Landrum, J.P. Massar, Chris Moneymaker, Tommy Joe Neal, Men Nguyen, David Notkin, Debbie Notkin, Paul Phillips, D. Potter, Andrew Prock, Rory Root, Steven Schwartz, Peter Secor, Spencer Sun, Larry Thomas, Ngoc "Jimmy" Tran, and Tom Whitmore. I also received a $9400 payment from Lucky Chances Casino and a number of payments from Casino San Pablo totalling close to $20,000. I have received payments from other people mentioned in the blog although not by name, and from many others, too numerous for me to have kept track.

In 2004 alone the payments I have received substanially exceeded what the Dean campaign paid Kos.

Zephyr Teachout, the source who blew the whistle on the Dean payments that Kos acknowledged in a disclaimer on his front page for months, is quoted as saying, I think its a good time for creating a culture of simply not writing about people you accept money from. Have I compromised my integrity as a blogger?

Update: Additional names added to make the list more complete.

LiveJournal Down But Good

A power failure at one of Internap's data centers has sent LiveJournal sprawling on the floor. LJ's admins are finding out the hard way that the name of Usenet newsgroup alt.sysadmin.recovery isn't about twelve-step programs, but instead is a job description:

Update #3: 2:42 am: We're starting to get tired, but all the hard stuff is done at least. Unfortunately a couple machines had lying hardware that didn't commit to disk when asked, so InnoDB's durability wasn't so durable (though no fault of InnoDB). We restored those machines from a recent backup and are replaying the binlogs (database changes) from the point of backup to present. That will take a couple hours to run. We'll also be replacing that hardware very shortly, or at least seeing if we can find/fix the reason it misbehaved. The four of us have been at this almost 12 hours, so we're going to take a bit of a break while the binlogs replay... Again, our apologies for the downtime. This has definitely been an experience.

It is through system failures and crashes that sysadmins show their true mettle. They have comparatively little to do between them –which explains a lot about the nature of Usenet, come to think of it.

The Portmeirion Declaration

Debbie Notkin just sent me the link to Students for an Orwellian Society.

Students for an Orwellian Society (SOS) is a nationwide student group. Although SOS has always been a nationwide student group, there is evidence to suggest that it first appeared at Columbia University. The mission of SOS is to promote the vision of a society based upon the principles of Ingsoc, first articulated by George Orwell in his prophetic novel, 1984.

I *Really* Didn't Want to Learn That

Kevin Drum points out that Andrew Sullivan's blog "has become a must read for anyone who cares about the torture scandal."

I'm currently letting a half-outlined essay on Americans and torture bubble and stew on my mind's back burner. (Its perhaps too-cute working title is "The Shadow of the Torturer" because its thesis is that there is a torturer in America's collective Shadow, in the Jungian sense of the word.) I'm very interested in any new carrots and potatoes to throw into the pot. So I checked Sullivan's blog, and goddammit, Kevin is right. I'm going to go back there regularly and keep reading it. Crap.

Sullivan also has a crackerjack essay in the New York Times Book Review which is as good a summary as I've seen of the story so far.

What Are They Teaching Kids in School These Days?

Bump, grind your way to riches, students told

Ryan Kim, Chronicle Staff Writer

Students at a Palo Alto middle school learned more than school officials ever expected when a recent "career day" speaker extolled the merits of stripping and expounded on the financial benefits of a larger bust.

The hubbub began Tuesday at Jane Lathrop Stanford Middle School's third annual career day when a student asked Foster City salesman William Fried to explain why he listed "exotic dancer" and "stripper" on a handout of potential careers. Fried, who spoke to about 45 eighth-grade students during two separate 55-minute sessions, spent about a minute explaining that the profession is viable and potentially lucrative for those blessed with the physique and talent for the job.

According to Fried and students who attended the talk, Fried told one group of about 16 students that strippers can earn as much as $250,000 a year and that a larger bust – whether natural or augmented – has a direct relationship to a dancer's salary.

He told the students, "For every two inches up there, it's another $50, 000," according to Jason Garcia, 14. ...

Principal Joseph Di Salvo, while insisting the matter had become overblown, agreed that the topic was inappropriate. He drafted a letter Thursday to parents of the school's eighth-grade students saying that, while many students were not offended by the talk, it should not have occurred.

"Our goal was to expose to students a variety of careers, but our intent was not strippers or exotic dancers," said Di Salvo, saying Fried will most likely not be invited back next year. "Dancing is fine, but dancing in a sexual way is not fine because of where the kids are in their lives." ...

Reached at his home, Fried said he understands that some may have felt he crossed the line, but he stood by his overall conduct. His remarks were part of a larger presentation entitled, "The Secret of a Happy Life," which he's given at the last two career days. The talk is aimed at inspiring kids to find happiness by settling on careers that they love to do and are especially equipped to perform.

As part of the presentation, he handed out a brochure featuring a list of more than 100 fields to investigate, including advertising and investment banking but also poker, stunt flying and stripping.

"I believe you should be honest and open with everyone, and there is no such thing as inappropriateness," said Fried, 64, who owns a sales consulting firm. "Eighth-grade kids can digest a lot more than their parents believe they can. The mind will put it in its proper niche. I don't believe any kid was marred or harmed by any of the talks." ...

In hindsight, Fried, who has no children, said his message didn't need to stray so far afield.

"Maybe I could have probably spent less time on exotic dancing," he said. "But I think the kids were entertained."

(via SF Gate)

Anna Vargo

Anna Vargo died this morning at 12:02 AM PST, after an all-too-brief struggle with cancer.

I don't have much more to say than that. D. Potter is coming over this morning so she and I can spend some time commiserating before Debbie's and my Second Sunday salon gets going in the afternoon.

Boxer Forces Debate on Ohio Election

From the Associated Press:

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., signed a challenge mounted by House Democrats to Ohio's 20 electoral votes, which put Bush over the top. By law, a protest signed by members of the House and Senate requires both chambers to meet separately for up to two hours to consider it. Lawmakers are allowed to speak for no more than five minutes each.

"I have concluded that objecting to the electoral votes from Ohio is the only immediate way to bring these issues to light by allowing you to have a two-hour debate to let the American people know the facts surrounding Ohio's election," Boxer wrote in a letter to Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, D-Ohio, a leader of the Democratic effort.

The action seems certain to leave Bush's victory intact because both Republican-controlled chambers would have to uphold the objection for Ohio's votes to be invalidated. But supporters of the drive hope their move will shine a national spotlight on the Ohio voting problems.

Given Republican control of both the House and the Senate, the nominal result of the debate – confirmation the election of Bush – is a foregone conclusion. But this debate will enable to keep the spotlight, however briefly, upon Ohio's Republican secretary of state, J. Kenneth Blackwell, who is alleged to have intervened in the election over and over again in ways that contravened state and federal law.

Thanks go to all those people who called Sen. Boxer's offices to support her taking this position; by my count at least nine Californians in my own corner of blogtopia (y!sctp!) made calls as a result either of my post or reposts that linked to me. Kudos, of course, to Skippy and Daily Kos diarist ssteuer for bringing attention to the need to give Sen. Boxer that extra nudge.

*Squick!*

MSNBC reports that the Bush Administration clearly intends to continue its shameful practices of torture:

The inaugural ceremony will include performances by the U.S. Naval Academy Glee Club, the U.S. Marine Band and mezzo sopranos Denyce Graves and Susan Graham.

Guy Hovis, a vocalist from Tupelo, Miss., who performed on the Lawrence Welk show, will sing, “Let the Eagles Soar,” a song written by Attorney General John Ashcroft.

(via Atrios)

California Voters: Call Barbara Boxer TODAY!

Diarist ssteur at the Daily Kos reports that:

Barbara Boxer apparently told a group of 20 women meeting with her that if she gets enough people asking her to do it, she WILL be the senator to join Rep. Conyers.

ssteur quotes this message, received by way of the ACT action network:

------ Forwarded Message From : Lydia F

Just came from a group which gathered at Senator Barbara Boxer's Office here in Fresno. There were about 20 of us representing Fresno, Visalia, Porterville and Springville. It was awesome since they had to come to Fresno through the rain... We were told that Senator Boxer was willing to be the Senator who will ask for the re-election in Ohio provided she sees numbers. This is a grassroots effort and it depends on each of us to pass this information on. (see below for offices and phone numbers)

As a reminder, what is actually being asked for is for Sen. Boxer to challenge, along with Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich), the vote of the Electoral College. This will trigger a Constitutionally mandated review by Congress of the election.

Keep it simple: Say that you are a California voter and that you urge her to join Rep. Conyers in challenging the results of the Electoral College vote.

Here, from ssteur's diary, are addresses and phone numbers of Senator Boxer's California offices:

Sacramento
501 I Street, Suite 7-600
Sacramento, CA 95814
(916) 448-2787
(916) 448-2563 fax

San Francisco
1700 Montgomery Street, Suite 240
San Francisco, CA 94111
(415) 403-0100
(415) 956-6701 fax

Los Angeles
312 N. Spring Street, Suite 1748
Los Angeles, CA 90012
(213) 894-5000
(213) 894-5042 fax

Fresno
1130 O Street, Suite 2450
Fresno, CA 93721
(559) 497-5109
(559) 497-5111 fax

San Diego
600 B Street, Suite 2240
San Diego, CA 92101
(619) 239-3884
(619) 239-5719 fax

Inland Empire
201 North E Street, Suite 210
San Bernardino, CA 92401
(909) 888-8525
(909) 888-8613 fax

(via Skippy)

DINO Feinstein

Senator Diane Feinstein
United States Senate
331 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510

January 5, 2005

Senator Feinstein:

I read in Joshua Micah Marshall's weblog Talking Points Memo that in letters to constituents you have been guarded and equivocal about the Bush Administration's proposals to begin the dismantling of Social Security.

The attack on Social Security is an attack on the people of America, and in particular an attack on the people of California. This is no time for equivocation. I call upon you to state clearly and unambiguously your opposition to the Bush plan to roll back Social Security, and to stick to this resolve in voting against it, and in encouraging your colleagues on both sides of the aisle to do likewise.

Please do not under any circumstances caucus with other senators who support the betrayal of the American people that the Bush plan represents.

With utmost sincerity,

Alan L. Bostick

The Ballot and the Damage Done

Bernard Mayer writes in The Dynamics of Conflict Resolution:

We can often achieve progress in a conflect, even when disputants have incompatible substantive interests, if we are careful to address psychological and procedural interests.

The U.S. philosophy of government provides an interesting example of how these interests work. At the root of democracy is a commitment to addressing procedural interests, even when substantive interests cannot always be met. Many Americans' governmental values are related to these procedural interests. We in the United States remain loyal to our government, even if we disagree with its policies and have not voted for its leaders, because we fundamentally support the process by which they were selected. The basic deal in a democracy is that we may not always get our way but we will always have our say, and in return we will remain loyal citizens. (p. 19; emphasis added)

The unfortunate corollary is that should there be a widespread perception that the selection process for our leaders has been corrupted or suborned, then the basis for U.S. citizen's loyalty is undermined.

We are all long since familiar with what happened in the 2000 presidential election balloting in Florida: The justices of U.S. Supreme Court intervened to halt the recount of ballots, and thus giving George Bush the presidency. Many people believe that the 2004 has also been stolen by the Republicans, through intervention in the swing state of Ohio (link via Avedon Carol)

David Neiwert at Orcinus documents in some detail the unfolding of the close election for governor in the state of Washington. He draws the parallels to the 2000 Florida presidential balloting, and notes that, while the Republicans followed the same playbook they did in Florida, the key difference is that Washington's Republican secretary of state, Sam Reed, chose to back the process instead of the party (in Mayer's terms, putting procedural interests ahead of substantive ones) and is catching flak from the GOP as a result. Many Republicans, it would seem, think winning is more important than legitimacy. These people are quick to accuse the Democrats of trying to win the election by any means necessary, while not hesitating to use underhanded means of their own.

Each side of the political divide, then, sees the other side as stealers of election, and sees at least some electoral results as illegitimate. At least some people regard it more important to secure power to further their agendas than it is to preserve the integrity of the mechanisms by which power is maintained and transferred. And the result is that a growing number of citizens are convinced that the elections are rigged, that the veneration of democracy and the Constitution that serves as the bedrock of American civic culture is a sham.

The Republic may well be facing its greatest danger since the Secession crisis of 1860; and that danger is not the threat of external attack by the like of al Qaeda, but instead the attack on its legitimacy by those who are desperate to take and keep power.

Return to Dreaming

I wandered away from posting my dreams last year. I even fell away from journaling them, after I had a really bad one that shook me up too much to write it down (although my therapist and I dissected it in some detail).

It's 2005, and I'm journaling my dreams again. Here are the latest:

1-2-2005 (1) I'm coming back to school, trying to find my dormitory. Last year, my dorm room was in Building 427. This year, according to the paperwork I have, it is in Building 463. I don't have a map of campus, but I remember where Building 427 is, so I go there and look around for my building. I find a building that I think is it, but it isn't a dormitory at all, but is instead filled with offices, classrooms, laboratories. I discover that the building is actually Building 2463, and that ivy on the wall had obscured the leading digit when I first saw it.

The dream segues into something about magic. I'm a student of Harry-Potter-style magic, and I have been captured by or somehow infiltrated the retinue of an evil wizard. In a room where the wizard's retinue is lounging about, a slender Asian woman wearing a leotard tempts me by posing suggestively in front of me, and then sitting in my lap. I worry that if she succeeds in seducing me I might fall under her sexual spell. I ask her if this is her intention, and she smiles at me, saying "Maybe...."

I notice C--------- in the room, lounging about suggestively, apparently trying to get the erotic attention of the evil wizard. "Is that wise?" I whisper to her. She shushes me, because she doesn't want either of us infiltrators to be caught and punished.

Another member of the retinue, an Asian man who resembles George Takei, tries to scare me, the newcomer, by telling me of the horrible things he has witnessed: babies impaled on swords, villages full of people slaughtered, and so on. I reply that I know about them, hinting (lyingly) that I've been hardened to that sort of thing.

(2) Amber dream: on a schoolbus, I say something that implies I know about Amber. Two big kids, one of them tall and fat, take exception, in a way that lets me know that they are Amberites, also. We are driving around a hill covered with townhouses and condominiums – and something changes! Someone on the bus is working shadow. But it's really hard to work with shadow this close to Amber.

Now I'm in an aircraft, passing over the landscape. We're flying over the Vale of Garnath. There is the chaotic landscape at the terminus of the Black Road ... and that long black streak through the forest is the Black Road itself.

Now I'm in some kind of confrontation with Brand, who starts out in the form of a manticore, but eventually shapeshifts into human form. I'm in trouble. I reach for a set of Trumps and pull out the first card I can find: Benedict's. I make mental contact. He won't know who I am, but he's my only hope for survival. "Mayday, mayday, mayday!" I say to him over and over again.

1-4-2005 I've been recruited to maintain a large, powerful laser system run by a secret government agency. It transpires that this laser is part of a starship, either part of its propulsion system, a weapon, or both. Lee Jones [the poker author and former programmer for SGI] walks by and warns me about being careful with high-voltage cables and connections.

I'm looking at a technical manual for the laser system. It's a high-powered infrared laser whose lasing medium is a solid [in waking life I think it might be an Nd-YAG or -glass laser]. The manual designates the laser as the BFL-768, and it's pretty clear that "BFL" is an acronym for "Big Fuckin' Laser". The technical manual has lots of illustrations showing plots of resonator designs and yield curves. I turn the pages and also find pictures of nebulae and galaxies.

I don't have a desk of my own, yet. I'm in the bare office space of the guy who is supposed to train me, but he isn't here. Overhead is the laser, festooned with electrical cables. I want to find my boss and my own office space. I want to put the manual down and go looking, but the manual is classified -- I don't want to leave it unattended, and I don't know the combination for any locks on the office filing cabinets. I carry it with me as I go looking.