Critical Thinking
The wife likes to watch The Rachel Zoe Project. I watched with her a few minutes. One of Rachel’s assistants was mad at some interns she was in charge of. Things weren’t going well, and she had to say something to them. She spoke slowly, thinking carefully about what she was saying. And she said it.
Oh my god, you guys like so don’t take me serious!
Gee, I wonder why not.
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is a fantastic show. Although nothing will ever measure up to it’s first two seasons, it’s gotten very close. Of four episodes this season, two have been funny and two have been amazingly crying-from-laughing funny. Go online and watch Frank’s Intervention (maybe here also). Classic TV.
The best thing about the show is that it has no redeeming values whatsoever. None. Everything on the show is just awful. Even South Park usually has a lesson. Just reading the descriptions on Wikipedia made me laugh out loud.
The series follows The Gang, a group of five white, semi-alcoholic, unethical underachievers who run Paddy’s Pub, a run-down bar in Philadelphia.
Dennis, Dee (Deandra), Mac, Charlie, and Frank are dishonest, selfish, egotistical, and/or antagonistic, and are often embroiled in controversial issues. Episodes usually find them hatching elaborate schemes, conspiring against one another or others for personal gain or the pleasure of watching their downfall. Their tactics often rely on inflicting emotional and sometimes physical pain on individuals both deserving and undeserving. They regularly use sex to blackmail and manipulate one another and others outside of the group. Their unity is never solid; any of them would quickly dump the others for quick profit or personal gain regardless of the consequences.
Dennis has a strong superiority complex. He is almost wholly unable to empathize and routinely destroys others’ property, betrays his friends, and harshly criticizes the appearance of people in his presence. He even insults and demeans his friends, particularly Deandra and Charlie, on a regular basis and never hesitates to draw attention to their flaws, shortcomings, and past failures. Both his friends and enemies consistently refer to him as “a piece of sh*t” throughout the series.
Charlie is an angry underachiever prone to Al Pacino-styled outbursts. He has poor personal hygiene, lives in squalor, and frequently abuses inhalants such as glue and spray paint. Charlie, like the rest of The Gang, drinks copious amounts of alcohol. In addition, Charlie has abused anabolic steroids, LSD, and amyl nitrate poppers, and has been addicted to powdered cocaine. Throughout the show, Charlie exhibits difficulty reading and writing; The Gang frequently accuses him of being illiterate and calls him “retarded.”Sweet Dee was unpopular in high school due to her severe scoliosis, for which she wore a corrective back brace that earned her the nickname “The Aluminum Monster.” Despite identifying herself as a compassionate liberal, she is characterized as being selfish, greedy, and prejudiced. She is consistently criticized and belittled by The Gang for her appearance (in one episode Dennis refers to her as “The Female Larry Bird”), for her lack of talent, and for being a woman. Dee is usually ignored or ridiculed whenever she presents an idea to The Gang; however, if someone repeats her exact suggestion, it is immediately accepted. In her mother’s will, Dee is told that she has been a disappointment and a mistake (even though she is Dennis’ twin).
Like the rest of The Gang, Charlie has a poor grasp of history and current events, sometimes avoiding a conversation altogether to maintain his dignity.
Although he seeks his friends’ acceptance, Mac takes special pleasure in undermining, physically harming, contradicting, and publicly belittling Sweet Dee at every possible opportunity. Though Mac seems to care more about issues such as abortion, community activism, and parenting than the rest of The Gang, his views on such subjects are invaraiably twisted, ignorant, or prejudiced, and his actions regarding them are always hypocritical and selfish.
Frank claims to have his children’s best interests at heart but he frequently exploits and insults them. Over the course of the series he has pimped out his son Dennis for “no-rules” sexual favors and trained his daughter Sweet Dee to be a boxer so she could fight the daughter of his longtime nemesis. He is especially cruel to Dee, constantly remarking negatively on her age and looks. Frank personally waterboards Dee in Paddy’s men’s room to gain a confession in “The Gang Solves the Gas Crisis.”
He says he went to Vietnam, leading people to believe he fought in the Vietnam War, but Dennis and Dee both remind him that he went to Vietnam in 1993 to open a sweatshop.
FORT COLLINS, Colo. — A 6-year-old boy is floating over northeastern Colorado in a homebuilt balloon and authorities are racing to try and rescue him.
Update: I saw a few seconds of footage last night. Even in those few seconds I could tell there was no one in it. A balloon that size would float very differently with a 50 pound boy in it. It turned out the boy was sleeping in the attic. Oy.
These have gotten kind of boring, huh? I don’t remember many hands tonight (I gave blood earlier)… there were bad beats and lucky draws, there were bluffs and such bla bla.
We have accelerated the blind structure, so near the end of hour 3, there were 30 big blinds worth of chips in play with four players. You know what that means – lots of all-ins.
That is also a good time to have pocket queens when the other guy has pocket jacks.
And heads up is an awful good time to get pocket aces when the other guy has A-4.
Tonight: $116. I think. Between add-ons and bounties (we tried those out tonight) the math is a little shaky. It’s around thar somewheres.
Make up your mind.
A year ago, I enthused over my Acura’s windshield wiper controls. Specifically, that the intermittent wipers fastest setting was the same as having them on continuously. I discovered it’s even better than that. First it senses whether the car is moving. If it is, it puts them on continuous wiping. If it’s not, it leaves them with a small pause between wipes.
That’s clever!
I had lunch with some new people. I sat at a different people so I could get to know some co-workers I usually don’t associate with. Lunch was delicious: meatloaf and mashed potatoes.*
I was wiping up some of the sauce on a piece of roll. As I bit into it, it somehow fell out of my hand and back on the plate. I picked it up again. As I put it in my mouth it slipped out again and fell into my lap.
I looked up. One person had seen the whoel thing. I said to her, “You saw that, right? I just missed my mouth. Twice!”
I have a feeling I did not impress these new people.
(*Dan Quayle was right. Potatoes is a valid spelling.)
A very pointless machine. If you turn it on, it turns itself off.
Surely, this economic correlation is a coincidence. Right?
People still do this? Oh, I get it now.
Best riot picture
All kinds of non-prejudice
World’s worst glamour shot. Or something.
The English go to redneck country
Hitler vs. Stalin: The surprisingly literate comic book
Caricaturist is robbed. Draws perfect picture of attacker in 15 seconds, the police make an easy arrest.
The real villain of Star Wars
Banned copier commercial
Perfect Pitch demo. The other suggested links are neat also.
Dinosaurs visit a German TV talk show.
Pascal’s Wager revisited
The king of ball-hawking
Talking piano. Really. That is cool.
A glorious dawn: Sagan and Hawking sing with some help from autotune
Coming out: the diary of an 18-year old telling his parents he’s gay. (Start with the plain text, then move to the updates)
The accidental warlord
Unexpected psychology lessons from porn users
30 Senate Democrats stand up for a public option.
We have spent the better part of this year fighting for health reform that would provide insurance access and continuity to every American in a fiscally responsible manner,” the 30 Democratic Senators wrote in the Oct. 8 letter. “We are concerned that — absent a competitive and continuous public insurance option — health reform legislation will not produce nationwide access and ongoing cost containment. For that reason, we are asking for your leadership on ensuring that the merged health reform bill contains a public insurance option.
It’s about time.
Norman Chad is a great announcer. Sit back and think what he does. Poker is not an easy game to naturally make commentary for. But he does. There’s something like 25 hours of coverage this year, he’s been doing it for at least seven years, and still comes up with things to say. That’s quite impressive
The players are usually arranged around a theme. On-line vs off-line, USA vs Foreign (or USA vs Italy), Amater vs. Pro, etc. The best ones are the cash games. Watching someone raise $200,000 with absolutely nothing is riveting.
Runners up: Best Damn Poker Show (Phil Helmuth vs. Annie Duke reality show) and I Bet You (which I’ve never seen but guarantee it’s entertaining.)
P.S. This post has one sentence that ends in a preposition and has a split infinitive. Nice.
We mixed it up tonight with a little Omaha. Omaha is identical to Hold ’em, except for two things.
That last one is really hard to wrap your mind around. For example, having four aces isn’t so great. You have a pair of aces and you can’t improve it.
It was like going back to being a poker rookie again. I wasn’t trying to read people’s hands. I wasn’t trying to figure out when I could push people around. I was just trying to figure out if I had something good or not. And so was everyone else. In a typical hand tonight, most of the players limped in pre-flop. The flop came out and every player started looking at their cards, mentally deciding if they had a playable hand. 75% of the hands went all the way to the river. With four cards, you always have a draw. Winning hands were sets or better. A straight was, well, it was ok.
I misread two of my own hands. I lost two huge pots because I messed up the second rule. That was enough, I was knocked out in 7th place out of 8 people. Ah well, it was a lot of fun.
Tonight: -$20
This article from 2005 is probably still relevant:
STATE and local officials may be hanging their heads about the announcement that London, and not New York City, will be playing host to the 2012 Summer Olympics, but New Yorkers should be breathing a sigh of relief that the Games are now somebody else’s worry
I think there are good reasons to host if you are a second tier city, and can show the world that you are really a first tier city. It will drive long-term growth to your area. It’s brand building. Atlanta’s boom coincides with the Olympics, this is not a coincidence.
On the other hand, Montreal is still paying off the debt from hosting in the 1970s. And Chicago doesn’t need to show the world it’s a great place, everyone knows that Chicago is a great place. What do they get out of it? Nothing.
(Thanks to LilBro for the link.)
