Month: October 2008

Kids don’t like Almond Joy. I agree with them.

Our mixed bag has Resse’s Snickers, M&Ms (chocolate and peanut butter), KitKats, Almond Joys, Butterfingers, Hersheys, Baby Ruths, and Crunch bars. It’s not even close.

When one of the best players gets lucky, everyone else is in trouble. Tonight that person was not me. I played well and it didn’t matter.

In the early going, 4 players limped in. I figured I would limp in with any connectors, pairs, high cards… just about anything. I had Q-7. Not that. I folded, and the flop was Q-Q-7. Argh, I shoulda limped in with everyone else. The next hand three players limp. I have Q-7 again! I grit my teeth and fold. The flop was Q-7-3. Oh, c’mon! Later in the night I was dealt Q-7. I had to call. The flop was A-K-4 and I summarily folded.

Meanwhile one of the other good players is hitting cards left and right. Our eleven players are down to four. Top three finish in the money. I have the second biggest stack, but he has over 50% of the chips. With blinds at 200-400, I have K-J suited and position. I go in for 1100, he calls me from the small blind. The flop is K-x-x. He thinks for a while and bets 1,500. I’m fairly sure he has nothing or King with a low kicker. I think about stringing him along. Eh, why take chances? I call his 1,500 and go all in for 3,200 more. He calls. He has A-J. He had the better hand preflop, but I have the K on the board. You can see where this is going to end up, right? Yes and no. The turn and river are 10 and Q, he gets the straight to knock me out. Annoying. I finished just out of the money.

Tonight: -$20
Running Total: $550

I check in on my financial accounts (bank accounts, retirement accounts, 529s) every month. We lost 20% in October. Brutal.

The New York Times magazine had a great article on the re-branding of John McCain. This particular quote stuck out at me.

Reviewing the tape, it didn’t concern Davis that Palin seemed out of her depth on health-care issues or that, when asked to name her favorite candidate among the Republican field, she said, “I’m undecided.” What he liked was how she stuck to her pet issues — energy independence and ethics reform — and thereby refused to let Rose manage the interview. This was the case throughout all of the Palin footage. Consistency. Confidence. And . . . well, look at her.A friend had said to Davis: “The way you pick a vice president is, you get a frame of Time magazine, and you put the pictures of the people in that frame. You look at who fits that frame best — that’s your V. P.”

Shameful. The very next paragraph:

Schmidt, to whom Davis quietly supplied the Palin footage, agreed. Neither man apparently saw her lack of familiarity with major national or international issues as a serious liability.

This is not a man who showed good judgement. This is not a man who put his country first. This is a man who let the most base and political advisers pick his vice president because she looked good.

Inspirational puzzles!? And Chicken Soup for the Soul dogfood? Can we officially call a halt to this? Maybe Chicken Soup for the Soul Shark Jumping?

Anyhow, everyone knows that matzoh ball soup is much better.

Been some time since I did one of these posts. Wonder how many I forgot?

One of my favorite genres of books is a new breed. Exemplified by Freakonomics and Blink, these books tell us where the new areas of thought are developing, how you can view phenomona through different eyes, or explore an everyday topic through the eyes of many different professions. The first three are all in the broad area of knowledge.
• Supercrunchers (Ian Ayres):This is the most “quant” book here. That’s because the book is about the power of using quantitative analysis of large datasets. How are Google, Amazon, Facebook, and other big internet companies able to know more about ourselves than we do? How did evidence-based medicine start, and why is it still such an uphill fight? My favorite anecdoate from the book: The author wanted to call the book something else. He chose several potential titles, and ran a test. He placed Google ads in a controlled experiment, altering the title each time. He gave up on his original title and renamed it Supercrunchers, which had tested better than the others.
• Predictably Irrational (Dan Ariely):Many books have been written about the non-rationality of people. In my opinion, the main advance in economics in the last thirty years is the incorporation of human psychology into the caricature of rational man. This books start there and goes a step further. It’s not just that people are crazy, it’s that we’re crazy in very specific, very predictable ways. If you have any interest in understanding what makes you tick, you’ll enjoy this book. My only criticism is that it draws to heavily on his own research. Relying on one experimenter means that some studies are suggestive rather than conclusive, and other parts of the field are ignored.
• Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us) (Tom Vanderbilt)Traffic is something we all deal with, we all get frustrated by, and we rarely think about in a rational way. Vanderbilt tours us through anything and everything touching on traffic. What’s an efficient merge? Does having more signs help? What’s the impact of big cars on a road? Does building more roads make things better or worse? How do you design roads when the people driving them are so wildly heterogeneous in the goals and abilities? Does Los Angeles actually do a good job with their traffic? How do other countries deal with it? Are cell phones really that big a problem? Who are the worst drivers? What exactly is a good road system supposed to do? How do you balance the impact of faster speeds for all vs accidents for a few? Are safe roads really safer? Etc, etc.
• Mr. Sebastian and the Negro Magician (Daniel Wallace)I am really far behind. I was scanning the shelves at the library and couldn’t resist the title. I read it while our daughter was being delivered five months ago. (No, not literally while she was being delivered.) It’s by the author of Big Fish, and shows the same kind of raw story-telling abilities. Wallace can make the fantastic seem ordinary and the opposite in the blink of an eye, and do it so that you are fully immersed in the story, never once thinking how little sense any of it makes. A book filled with sadness and wonder.
• The Little Book of Common Sense Investing: The Only Way to Guarantee Your Fair Share of Stock Market Returns (Little Books. Big Profits) (Bogle, John C.):My investing “career”, such as it is, has been a steady progression from active gambling to passive investing. My first stock purchase was rolling the dice on Ticketmaster which lost 50% of it’s value the next day. No lie. After a couple more blows (and a couple successes here and there) I realized that I was not a particularly good stock picker. From then on, I split my personality. Gambling is for gambling, which I do as much as possible but for small stakes. My real money was moved to mutual funds, which then became index funds.

  All of which is to say I was already a believer in index funds before I read this book by the legendary John Bogle (he started Vanguard). I knew two or three good reasons index funds are superior, but this book showed me two or three more. I am more convinced than ever that purchasing anything else is a fools errand.

  (See my other favorite financial books here.)

• His Excellency: George Washington (Joseph J. Ellis): A fascinating biography of George Washington. I learned a lot about him and the times he lived in. It was amazing to see how someone could rise up from virtually nothing to become the unquestioned king of America (even if the title was different). And then to have the personality that willingly and eagerly gives it all up — you see how the force and character of his personality has invested our national character. My favorite scene – when he decides to crack down on some wannabe rebels personally. He’s the only president to ever lead the army personally during office. The rebels basically gave up the second they knew he was on his way.

Since we all seem to be fans of fivethirtyeight.com, here’s their money quote from a day or two ago:

John McCain’s chances of winning the election have dwindled to 3.7%, down from 6.5% yesterday.

Even Scott McClellan is voting for Obama. Bill Weld too. Virtually every moderate republican has flipped sides.

Muttrox curse aside, does anyone have any reason to think that McCain could pull this out?

This comic below is apparently true, I’m seeing anecdotes in other places with the same theme.

Sports quote of the year

Shopping cart fail

A wonderful picture of Mt. Fuji

Twins

Terry Tate is back!

Trying to get arrested by the TSA

Ignorant parent of the year award. Just, ugh.

Why you don’t friend your boss on Facebook

Walking the Walk

Early Sesame Street has been released. Not appropriate for children.

New video released of McCain as POW

Tom the Dancing Bug is just so good. Even when it’s not as it’s best, it’s great.

Ron Howard/Opie/Richie Cunningham endorses Obama. Along with Sherrif Andy and the Fonz, he finally reprises his childhood parts.

Greenspan cops to the idea that he messed up a bit.

On NPR, Rich Lowry gave one of the dumbest defenses of McCain ever. It’s not even a defense of McCain. It’s allegedly why McCain might win the election after all, but there’s nothing in there to support it. It tells us what a great guy he is, it tells us how unfair the media coverage has been, it tells he’s been through worse, but not one word about why he might win.

Well, fine, I’m used to that. But surely the editor of the National Review can spot this doozy in his own piece?

In our imaginations, we always yearn for political candidates who demonstrate bravery and independence, who put conscience above expediency and don’t take partisan marching orders. Among current national figures, John McCain — for all his flaws — might be the closet approximation to this ideal.

Not bad, a very reasonable point.

Sure, his campaign has been negative, but how else is he supposed to beat a vastly better-funded candidate in a hostile media environment when his party’s image is in the pits?

Conscience above expediency, eh? That’s exactly what conscience would be, avoiding an incredibly sleazy campaign because it’s the right thing to do. Poor McCain. He wants to run an honorable campaign, but Obama is making him be a dirtbag! Oh, how horrible it must be to be John McCain, suffering day and night over your decision to run this election through every mudhole your team of Rove proteges can find! Cry me a river.

Last years post was so popular, time to get some WSOP commentary going. Sadly, I don’t have much interesting to say yet.

* I’ve been rooting for Phil Helmuth. I want to see a pro win, I want to see someone interesting win. I guess it’s not to be. My next favorite is Mike Matusow. What on earth happened to him, that weight loss put a new brain in his head or something.

* Guess who sponsors the Planters Good Instinct Moment? Go ahead, try. I’ll give you a hint. It says “Planters” on the screen, there’s a picture of a giant gentleman peanut, and the announcer is saying the word “Planters”. If you guessed Planters, you were right. This is a direct quote: “This Planters Good Instinct Moment is brought to you by Planters! Planters – Instinctively good.

* That Russian string bet was ridiculous. It couldn’t have been more illegal. That tournament director should be crying in his beer right now.

* Helmuth was clearly a jackass in last weeks episode. They said that he was penalized 9 hands, appealed it, and the penalty was overturned. So he gets no penalty at all? What is the point of having these rules if no one ever has to play by them?

I was beaten to the punch by my commenter, I was going to post almost the exact same thing.

His comment about Obama spending more on negative ads than anyone in presidential race history is probably accurate, and yet 2-to-1 people think that McCain is running a more negative race. Why – probably because Obama is also doing more positive ads than anyone in presidential history too, while McCain doesn’t have the cash for the ads to actually improve his reputation.

There’s a lot of detail about their advertising spend and how it breaks out here. A nice graphic is here.

As a percentage, McCain is running much more negative. And most of that negative is what’s called “character-based”. His top three ads (1) call Obama dishonorable and lie about a quote, (2) talk about William Ayers and blind ambition, and (3) paint Obama as a compulsive tax-cutter. Two out of three are “character-based”. In contrast, Obama’s are all about McCain’s policies, none of them are “character-based”.

Obama is spending about four times as much as McCain on advertising. Obama has announced even more record donations, so the margin is growing ever bigger. Of that, 41% is negative. So he sets a record. McCain is much more negative. If he had the money, he would set a record. But he doesn’t, so he complains about it. Another weak talking point that falls apart.

It’s really been over for over a month. But this just put the final nail in the coffin.

WASHINGTON — Senator Barack Obama on Sunday captured a forceful endorsement from former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and announced he had shattered campaign finance records in September, gaining an immense financial edge that will allow him to overwhelm Senator John McCain’s efforts in every corner of the country.