Online Poker Is Rigged!

Internet discussion forums have been torn by debates about the integrity of online poker sites since the advent of Internet gambling. At last, Bill's Blog has proof has been found that online poker is rigged!

This blow-up of a game at Party Poker clearly shows the computerized dealer dealing from the bottom of the deck!!!1!

(via TheRonin on 2+2)

I've Joined Netflix at Last...

... and I'm looking for movies to put into my queue.

This one looks good: a comedy for everyone who ever prayed for release from the bondage that is high school:

My Netflix account is the same as my email address, if you want to friend me there.

(via skippy)

Free Wine for Bloggers!

More than two years ago, I wrote:

Kevin Drum echoes David Bernstein and Tyler Cowen of The Volokh Conspiracy in wondering why publishers aren't vigorously courting book sales from the blogosphere by sending review copies of books to bloggers. Writers of weblogs, so goes the argument, are shapers and propagators of opinion; a book review in a prominent blog has the potential to reach thousands of readers, with a corresponding boost in sales.

There is a certain logic to this position. Here in the gleaming glass-walled skyscraper that is As I Please International World Headquarters, we are also wondering why more importers of single-malt scotch whiskey aren't vigorously courting sales growth from the blogosphere by offering freebies to bloggers. We also think that the potential of blogging for promoting high-end call girls (to say nothing of luxury sport sedans) is sadly underexploited.

It seems that at last someone is listening. Mankas Hills Vineyards, of Fairfield, California, is offering a free bottle of their 2004 Amelie Cabernet Sauvignon - Merlot to anyone in the United States who has a blog.

Restrictions apply; check the Mankas Hills Vineyards blog entry with the offer for details.

It's a good start; but I'm still waiting on my single-malt scotch.

(via Lindsay Beyerstein)

A Stunned U.S. Public Asks 'Why Does Our Constitution Hate Us?'

From SF Gate's Bad Reporter:

(via Avedon Carol)

Politics Before Public Safety

NBC is reporting that the US was putting strong pressure on the British government to make arrests earlier than British police officials wanted. The British police wanted more time to gather evidence. The British government was successfully resisting this pressure -- until its hand was forced by one of the conspirators being arrested in Pakistan.

Meanwhile, Bruce Schneier, writing in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, tells us:

The new airplane security measures focus on that plot, because authorities believe they have not captured everyone involved. It's reasonable to assume that a few lone plotters, knowing their compatriots are in jail and fearing their own arrest, would try to finish the job on their own. The authorities are not being public with the details -- much of the "explosive liquid" story doesn't hang together -- but the excessive security measures seem prudent.

In other words, the US effort to make swift arrests resulted in conspirators being left at large, when they very may well have been rounded up when the careful. professional police work of Scotland Yard was complete.

Air travelers were placed unnecessarily at risk because the Bush Administration once again screwed the pooch.

Why did they screw the pooch? The obvious speculation is that they needed to highlight a dramatic terrorist threat in the wake of their water-carrier Joe Lieberman's well-deserved defeat in the Connecticut Democratic primary. The sudden hysterical claims that the Lieberman loss was a victory for terrorism, just before the arrests, seems like too much of a coincidence to think otherwise.

It's as plain as daylight: George Bush and his stooges think winning elections is more important than your safety. It is more important to the Bush people that you be afraid of terrorists than that you actually are protected from them.

(Hat tip: Avedon Carol)

Jamie Gold Wins the Big Dance

Quoth Card Player:

Jamie Gold raises to $1,700,000 and Paul Wasicka makes the call. The flop comes Qc8h5h. Paul Wasicka bets $1,500,000 and Jamie Gold moves all in. Wasicka calls and shows 10h10s. However, Gold turns over Qs9c for a pair of queens. The turn is the Ad and the river is the 4c.

Paul Wasicka is eliminated from the tournament in 2nd place and earns $6,102,499.

Jamie Gold wins the $10,000 Main Event, the bracelet and $12,000,000.

My friend Sabyl Cohen busted out in 56th place, well into the money. She was the last woman remaining in this year's field.

Forty Signs of Rain

The icecap of Greenland is melting at an accelerating pace, says a group of researchers at the University of Texas, and there are indications that the West Antarctica Ice Sheet is also melting.

A recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- known as the IPCC -- estimated that during all of the past century worldwide melting ice from global warming had raised sea levels by only two-tenths of a millimeter a year, or about 20 inches for the entire century.[sic]

But, according to Chen and his Texas team, the melting of Greenland's ice cap is already raising global sea levels by six-tenths of a millimeter each year, and the Colorado group estimates that melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet alone is adding up to four-tenths of a millimeter of fresh water to sea levels each year. In other words, the global sea level, due to melting of the ice in Greenland and Antarctica combined, is already rising 10 [sic] times faster than the IPPC's tentative estimates, the two analyses indicate.

(The arithmetic in the SF Gate article reporting the news is serisously deficient. Over the course of 100 years, a rise of 0.2 mm/year amounts to 20 mm [about 0.8 inches], not 20 inches. And 0.6 mm/year + 0.4 mm/year = 1.0 mm/year, which is five times, not ten, the historical 0.2 mm/year reported by the IPCC.)

Notwithstanding the reporter's bad math, it is dire news indeed that the icecaps are melting at such speeds. The Chronicle article raises the spectre of fresh-water melt from Greenland shutting off the Gulf Stream, just like in a Stan Robinson novel.

Joe Lieberman Files to Run as Independent

Quoth SF Gate:

Top Democrats on Capitol Hill abandoned Sen. Joe Lieberman one by one Wednesday and threw their support to Ned Lamont, the anti-war challenger who defeated him in the primary. But Lieberman said his conscience demands that he run as an independent in November.

Anti-Semitisim in Ha'aretz?

Remember when New York Times columnist David Brooks made the case that the critics of the neoconservatives are anti-semitic? ([C]on is short for "conservative" and neo is short for "Jewish")

Brooks's lede was about how stories of a "tightly knit neocon cabal" were appearing in the world press: The Asian press had the most lurid stories; the European press the most thorough. Every day, it seemed, Le Monde or some deep-thinking German paper would have an exposé on the neocon cabal, complete with charts connecting all the conspirators.

It seems that we can now add Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz to the list of foreign newspapers peddling anti-semitic conspiracy theories to the full-moon crowd. In an opinion piece entitled "Ending the Neoconservative Nightmare," Daniel Levy writes:

In 1996 a group of then opposition U.S. policy agitators, including Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, presented a paper entitled "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm" to incoming Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The "clean break" was from the prevailing peace process, advocating that Israel pursue a combination of roll-back, destabilization and containment in the region, including striking at Syria and removing Saddam Hussein from power in favor of "Hashemite control in Iraq." The Israeli horse they backed then was not up to the task.

Ten years later, as Netanyahu languishes in the opposition, as head of a small Likud faction, Perle, Feith and their neoconservative friends have justifiably earned a reputation as awesome wielders of foreign-policy influence under George W. Bush.

(via Josh Marshall)