Anatomy of a scab

Question: If, during the writer's strike, a writer donates a screenplay to a production company in return for nothing other than a screenplay credit, is that writer crossing the metaphorical picket line?

Discuss.

Fears that hold so still you can study them

I'm sitting in the big blind with five nine off and the guy in first position -- who happens to be the big stack -- comes in with a small raise and the table folds around to me. I call, figuring it's a cheap opportunity to build my table image as a player who gives action. What do you know, the flop comes five five seven rainbow and I'm looking at a set. I check and the big stack goes all in.

What's the right play? Well, he probably doesn't have a five which means that I don't have to worry about being out-kicked. So it's either a pure bluff, an open ended straight draw, or a pocket pair. Of all that, the only hand better than mine are pocket sevens. Of all the hands he might have, it's only with the straight draw that I'd consider making the bet he did. But that's my game and this guy has been over-betting strong hands and folding to raises all night. And, anyway, why would he raise pre-flop with six eight? So I put him on pocket sevens. And yet I make the call. And of course he's holding hockey sticks. As it happened, I sucked out a nine on the river to take the hand.

I'd like to be able to explain my call by saying that, in the long run, sticking to the principle of never folding a set will be a more successful strategy than sometimes folding. And that may even be right. But the honest truth is that I called because I just couldn't bring myself to let go of the best hand I'd seen in awhile.

Here's my question. Did I make a read on this guy or not? On the one hand, there's no denying that the little voice inside my head said that he was sitting on sevens. On the other hand, Aristotle assures me that if I'd really believed that he had the nut set then I would have folded.

Did you know...

...about this?

Dubious Distinctions: Tyrants and Sycophants

Arthur Silber suggests that the Democrats are morally worse than the Republicans.

[T]he Democrats are now worse than the Republicans... The Republicans proudly assert their support of our aggressively interventionist foreign policy... The Republicans also proudly and repeatedly confirm their support for a dictatorial executive branch, indeed... The Republicans stake this criminal territory for themselves, they do so without apology, and they act accordingly.

Meanwhile, the Democrats say that they now oppose the invasion and occupation of Iraq. But they consistently and adamantly refuse to recognize the criminal nature of what the U.S. has done. At worst, they will say that the invasion of Iraq was a monumental "blunder," and that the invasion and occupation have been executed "incompetently." They cannot and will not say that we have committed a crime of historic proportions. ...

In a similar manner, the Democrats say they oppose an authoritarian executive branch, and that they oppose the incipient dictatorship at home.

Despite these protestations, they permitted the Military Commissions Act to pass -- and they have provided no indication whatsoever that they propose to repeal it. The Democrats helped pass the FISA bill several months ago -- an act that significantly increases the government's surveillance powers.

At every opportunity, the Democrats either fail to mount any serious opposition or they actively support the further means to a more oppressive government...

So which is worse? Those who support evil, but insist they believe it is good? Or those who support evil while claiming, at least some of the time, that they actually know it is evil?

|The Barren, Deadly Wasteland that Is Now Our Life - Once Upon a Time|

I'm not sure I agree with Mr. Silber's conclusion that the Democrats are somehow worse than the Republicans.

Certainly the hypocrisy (and impotence) of the Democrats is disheartening, but how can you claim that is worse than a party that is openly and cheerfully evil?

Am I missing something important here?

In internet years, I'm about 90 years old

I'm just saying that, yeah, the internet pipes are fat enough to contain all the "You Tubes" one could possibly want. But in the brief period between the conception of the internet browser and the new, media-rich internet, there was a time when good old-fashioned reading had a glorious resurgence.

And just like that, it was gone. And I miss it. And I don't go to Talking Points Memo nearly as often since they started posting half their content in videos. Also, Josh Marshall is no Rocketboom girl, whatever her name was.

A ruling bureaucracy was created instead, insulating the vanguard from the proletariat

Two notable events from April 18, 1991: (1) At or around 8:00pm I was accidentally dosed with LSD; (2) I stayed up the rest of the night to finish a term paper. The title was "Theory and Practice: A Comparison of Lenin's Pre-Revolution Ideas and the Policies of War Communism." Here's an excerpt from the concluding section:

Soviet agricultural policy under War Communism was motivated both by practical and ideological considerations. Grain requisitioning became a necessity to feed the cities when the old system of distribution broke down. The persecution of the Kulak and other members of what Lenin called the "petty-bourgeoisie" was called for in State and Revolution. The Bolsheviks attempted to ground their grain requisitioning in theory by taking the surplus generated by the Kulaks, but in reality the definition of Kulak became so stretched as to be virtually meaningless and requisitioning committees often ignored distinctions between rich and poor peasants anyway.

Both more cogent and more dull than the literature on LSD would lead one to expect.

A note about "Conservapedia"

This blogger is continuously astonished at how his suspicions about social conservatives are confirmed over and over again. Via eggsyntax:

Wikipedia is "The Free Encyclopedia." What's on the mind of Wikipedia its readers? Here are the top ten most viewed pages on Wikipedia:

Main Page [30,090,900]
Wiki [904,800]
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows [413,400]
Naruto [401,400]
Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock [396,000]
United States [330,000]
Wikipedia [329,400]
Deaths in 2007 [321,300]
Heroes (TV series) [307,500]
Transformers (film) [303,600]

Conservapedia is "The Trustworthy Encyclopedia." What's on the mind of its readers? Here are the top ten most viewed pages on Conservapedia:

Main Page‎ [1,906,729]
Homosexuality‎ [1,572,713]
Homosexuality and Hepatitis‎ [517,086]
Homosexuality and Promiscuity‎ [420,687]
Gay Bowel Syndrome‎ [389,052]
Homosexuality and Parasites‎ [388,123]
Homosexuality and Domestic Violence‎ [365,888]
Homosexuality and Gonorrhea‎ [331,553]
Homosexuality and Mental Health‎ [291,179]
Homosexuality and Syphilis‎ [265,322

Funny thing

I was watching Meet the Press (or maybe it was Face the Nation) this morning and they replayed Senator Clinton's gaffe from a few debates ago where -- as I'm sure you recall -- she failed to say that NY Governor Spitzer's plan to provide driver's licences to illegal aliens would lead to the destruction of the American way of life. I thought she gave a good answer, so good that it made me feel a lot better about the possibility of a Hillary Clinton presidency. Thus, I conclude that her candidacy is doomed.

For the Big XII haters in the house

Heh.

Dept of corrections

From last December:

Speaking of exclusion from the Hall of Fame, Steve Garvey is down to two years of ballot eligibility. He was named on only a quarter of ballots last year, and has never been named on more than 43%, so it's looking like he won't make it into the Hall of Fame. It's a shame. |link|

It turns out, though, that last year was Garvey's last on the ballot. Oops.

And it is a shame. Especially when you look at the list of players coming on to the ballot over the next two years. Ricky Henderson is a first ballot lock in 2009, but nobody else looks likely to make the Hall, let alone on the first ballot. Tim Raines is probably the next strongest candidate, and he doesn't meet barely even meets my lax standards. With that kind of competition, there might have been room for Garvey.

By the by, while tooling around baseball-reference.com I noticed a stat I hadn't seen before -- HOF Monitor. Here's the description:

This is another Jamesian creation. It attempts to assess how likely (not how deserving) an active player is to make the Hall of Fame. It's rough scale is 100 means a good possibility and 130 is a virtual cinch. It isn't hard and fast, but it does a pretty good job.

Follow the link to see the rules for assigning points. Steve Garvey scored 130.5 points.

This post has been edited by its author.

Wow

via post-graduate-reading-level blogger Neal.

First against the wall (presumably to be shot)

From Ogged, we consider the quetion of who should be "first against the wall when the revolution comes." Ogged chooses John Yoo, and I admit that his reasons are sound ("... I genuinely hate him..."). Personally I find it difficult to hate over politics. Perhaps it's a weakness.

I guess I would go with Fred Phelps. What about you, dear readers?

Wingnuts debunking wingnuts

Bill Kristol thinks that Joe Lieberman would make a great Veep candidate for some republican. It would do all sorts of things, including "scramble the political chess board." In response, Ramesh Ponnuru is making sense:

Lieberman for Veep?

I'm not sure what the case for putting him on the ticket is. To prove that Republicans are willing to reach out to Democrats whom most Democrats hate? To show that Republicans are the hawkish party? I think people already know that.

You can't irrigate the desert with the tears of Amy Winehouse

Because of the salt. Obviously.

Anyway, I never do this, but Dave3544 tagged me with a meme and since I'm not going to get around to that for awhile, I thought I'd throw up a random ten. Here you go:

1. I Wanna Be Free – Loretta Lynn
   
2. I Don’t Want Anything – Lezli Valentine
   
3. Epistrophy – Thelonious Monk
   
4. Kool Keith’s A#! – Princess Superstar
   
5. This Woman – Desmond Dekker
   
6. Nowhere To Stand – k.d. lang
   
7. Doin’ Time – Sublime
   
8. Sitting on Top of the World – Mississippi Sheiks
   
9. A-Tisket A-Tasket – Chick Webb & His Orchestra featuring Ella Fitzgerald
   
10. Breaking The Law – Judas Priest

Bonus Track: Just Over in the Gloryland – Anonymous 4

Quote of the month

"There's also the question of who would control the weather."

Indeed

I'll give you agreeable, woody, and complex...

In 2001, Frederic Brochet, of the University of Bordeaux, conducted two separate and very mischievous experiments. In the first test, Brochet invited 57 wine experts and asked them to give their impressions of what looked like two glasses of red and white wine. The wines were actually the same white wine, one of which had been tinted red with food coloring. But that didn't stop the experts from describing the "red" wine in language typically used to describe red wines. One expert praised its "jamminess," while another enjoyed its "crushed red fruit." Not a single one noticed it was actually a white wine.

The second test Brochet conducted was even more damning. He took a middling Bordeaux and served it in two different bottles. One bottle was a fancy grand-cru. The other bottle was an ordinary vin du table. Despite the fact that they were actually being served the exact same wine, the experts gave the differently labeled bottles nearly opposite ratings. The grand cru was "agreeable, woody, complex, balanced and rounded," while the vin du table was "weak, short, light, flat and faulty". Forty experts said the wine with the fancy label was worth drinking, while only 12 said the cheap wine was.

The blogger goes on to make some points about subjectivity that sound about right, but I don't think they are necessary to explain the horseshit that is wine and food criticism.

Did you know...

... that Japan is now the world’s second-largest producer of single-malt whisky? It might be true!