Muttroxia

A few of my readers may know Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. It is one of the most popular and honored science fiction books ever. I loved it when I first read it. Rrereading it as an adult left me feeling disoriented, and I’ve found his other books surprisingly childish. I recently came across a pair of revealing essays about the book.

The first one draws explicit links between Ender and Hitler, claiming that Card deliberately wrote the story as an apology for Hitler. (One of her friends goes further, claiming that Card didn’t even write the book.) Card wrote a rebuttal, but it isn’t available online.

A more tempered and ultimately convincing essay from John Kessel is worth reading in full. His last section (“Why is Ender’s Game popular?”) gets at the heart of my difficulties reading Card’s fiction as an adult.

By the way, Enders Game is currently being made into a movie.

Bad playing, bad cards. I called all-ins 3 times, and was wrong all three times.

1) From the small blind, I raise up 3x, I have As-3s. Big blind goes all in. I’m pot committed with decent cards. He has Q-Q, I get my A for the win.
2) At 100-200, three players have limped to my big blind. I have A-10. I make a move and push it to 600. One player goes all-in for another 1150, almost all of my chips. That’s odd… he limped in and then goes all-in. Hmm… well, he could have a monster hand that he was slowplaying. Or he could have a marginal hand that he’s trying to bluff me on. He actually said, “I’m playing these and if you suck out on me so be it.”, but he’s crafty. As long as he doesn’t have me dominated I think I’m getting the right price on my money. I call. He has A-Q which holds up.
3) After a mini-comeback, I get Ah-Kd. I bet 3.5x pre-flop, one caller. The flop is all low cards. I check to him, he checks. The turn is a jack, he goes all in. Why didn’t I raise preflop? Just because I didn’t have any pairs, pffooie, I could have forced him out. Unless he had a pair. Aw hell, what do I do. He obviously has a pair of jacks. There are three hearts on the board, any heart gives me a nut flush. Assuming he has a jack that’s 15 outs, so around 30% chance to win. Maybe less, he might have A-J or K-J. I’m getting 2-1 on my money. I call. He has Q-J. I need an A, K, or heart on the river, I don’t get it, I’m knocked out.

Note to self: Perhaps playing a game that emphasizes mental discipline is not recommended when one has given blood that day.

Running total: $46

I am falling further and further behind. I had to throw away boxing (stupid point system) and skip some other stuff, I’m only a couple hours back now.

Whitewater kayaking was fun. That’s the kind of sport I like to see in the Olympics.

Water Polo may not be a real sport, but this match was pretty awesome.

Swimming: There is something wrong the structure here. There are just too many races. Different lengths, different strokes, relay vs. individual. It’s not the Phelps isn’t incredible, but that he has the ability to compete in too many races. Kobe Bryant can only get one gold medal. Kayakers, weightlifters, archers only get one gold medal. (Maybe two I’m not sure of the details.) Gymnasts can get two I believe (one team, one individual). Are Mark Spitz and Michael Phelps truly the best Olympic athletes ever? They are not, they are just in the right discipline to get a lot of medals. They ought to get rid of half of the swimming races. Probably lose some of the track & field contests while we’re at it.

Men’s gymnastics: Let’s just say it. Kevin Tan is clearly a traitor. Isn’t it a nice coincidence that our Asian teammate chokes it all in the last event? Do the math people!

More seriously, it is amazing to see the ethnic makeup of the USA Olympic teams. No other country is like us. Our gymnastics team has Asians, Indians, and Russians. During the parade of nations, we had every color of human walking the route – a true testament to the melting pot ideology.

My commenters are right, the 4×100 freestyle relay was incredible. I just watched it a few minutes ago. I still can’t see if the USA anchor had an incredible leg, or the French anchor choked. Relatively speaking of course, since both teams crushed the world record. Just amazing. (Although – cheering louder than Celts/RS/Pats? C’mon!!!) It’s sad that they had to keep interviewing Phelps over and over, he had the second worst time on the team! And by the way, pull up your damn pants Michael! How would you like to be those French — you obliterate the world record by almost four seconds and somehow manage to lose.

I wish they would show more minor sports. Where’s the archery, pistols, velocidrome, curling, all those kinds of sports. I love volleyball, but enough is enough. I liked watching water polo, it was nice to see a sport I didn’t know anything about. I felt more educated when I announced after ten minutes that water polo is the dumbest sport in the world.

Bob Costas’s interview with Bush was really good. Funny how it takes a sportscaster to ask questions that are actually about policy instead of silly horserace questions. I wonder if it’s related that Bush’s responses were so much better than usual.

Those Chinese gymnasts are sick. The men are sick because they’re so good, the girls are sick because they’re all eight.

In a technology demonstration the other day, the presenter said they had started this project with a clean slate. In fact, he said, they “had gone all the way back to cell A1”.

It’s nice to see Bush there. He’s such an ordinary guy in this setting. Iraq, ridiculously low approval ratings, crashing economy etc.. none of that matters. Being a shallow frat-boy jock is a plus instead of a minus. I haven’t liked him this much in years.

Update: I don’t want to make fun of him, but he makes it so easy!

If that link doesn’t show, go here: http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/beijing/gallery/im:urn:newsml:sports.yahoo,getty:20050301:oly,photo,e9069654e472a74413906702d6aded19-getty-81972190mw013_olympics_day_:1

Death’s blog

Garfield, translated to Chinese and then back to English. And video tributes to Jim Davis. This is so weird I don’t know what to think.

Closed for the holiday

Dead End Deadlock

Irony

Keywords “oops”. I like the cat.

Another nice evening at church — aaauuggh, the dark lord is coming!

This house looks fine – wait, what was that picture of?

Good ol’ sexist advertising

This is what happens when you sleep during science class

Another Hitler mashup

Christianity in one sentence

Military humor photos

Pregnancy Tips

Atheist finds nothing in his toast

Welcome to Africa. That will be $29.

Figure out your gender from your websurfing. (Mine was close because Snapfish is very female.)

The Time Fountain

Incredible downhill mountain biking video

Incredible computerized waterfall

One more reason to like Paul McCartney

Freeman Dyson on Global Warming. Freeman Dyson is one of the clearest thinkers around, you will be that much smarter by reading anything he writes.
13-year old earning $140/hour playing electric guitar in Brighton

A good reason to vote for Al Franken

Physical Theories as Women

Britain, as seen from satellites. Beautiful footage

Fiscal Conservatism

Courthouse confessions. Strangely compelling.

Lightning in super slo-mo
A fantastic librarians letter about pulling a children book dealing with gay marriage

Prime Numbers get hitched – Using quantum physics to prove mathematics

I was watching another boring webinar at work the other day. A boring person was making a boring analogy about how something is like icebergs, most of the real story is hidden beneath the surface. Oh, what a clever analogy! It almost woke me up from my boring-fact-induced slumber!

Anyhow — the cool part was that I started mentally doodling on icebergs and suddenly connected two facts.

* Icebergs are nine-tenths below the surface.
* Water is one of the only liquids that expands when frozen. This is why pipes break and houses and ships creak in winter, all the water turns to ice and takes up more room than before, stressing the structure. When it thaws there is room “left over” so more water and such can get in. This is also why driveways and roads crack over time.

I realized that the first one follows from the second. If ice is about 10% less dense than water then it will float in water. The denser water will force it up until about 10% of it is above the surface. At that point, the 10% of the iceberg that is out of the water will have enough weight to equalize the “missing” weight of the water under the surface from it’s lower density.

Cool! Can I confirm this by getting more precise numbers? Wikipedia says that ice is 8% less dense than water. Exactly how much of an iceberg is above water? Their iceberg entry gives more precise numbers. Dang, I forgot that icebergs form out of sea water… 1025/920 = +11%, close enough to “one-tenth” for me. And with a little more searching I can find the formulas and logic. Neato!

(And I left the webinar early.)

I’ve never played so conservative in my life. I already wanted to play tight in the beginning rounds and when eleven players came that made it easier to play tight. In the first two hours I played to the flop only twice and never saw a turn. I won exactly one hand by stealing the blinds. These are the only two other hands I played in the first four rounds:

1) A-10. I bet 4x the blind. I’m called. Flop is K-K-J. I check, he raises a little over half the pot. I grudgingly fold. He showed the pocket jacks.
2) A-K of spades. I bet 3x the blind. I’m called. The flop is J-9-8 of diamonds. He goes all in. I have to fold.

I was slowly dying. By which I mean, it was ninety degrees out, under lights, next to a humid pool, and I had just played nine holes of golf – I was sweating like a pig. A big out-of-shape disgusting pig. Oh, also I didn’t have many chips left. I got down to 900. The blinds have just moved to 250-500, I obviously need to make a move. I look down and see pocket 9s. I’m just about to go all in when the person in front of me goes all in with 1800. That makes the decision harder. I decide not to do it. He had A-Q, so it could have gone either way. He gets knocked out on the play so I end up as big blind a hand early. Damnit!

I have A-8. I go all-in (only 400 more to go!) and get a caller who has A-Q. Uh-oh! The board ends up with 3-9-10, and the turn is an 7. I have an open-ended straight draw, but the J would give him a higher straight. Yes, I get the 6 on the river! I am alive and nearly tripled up.

Here my luck turns. There are only six players left, and I start to get cards. Not great cards, but cards good enough to play. I have enough chips that I can finally start playing some offense.

Down to four players. I take out two of them with hands like my A-8 vs. their A-3. So to Kid’s point, there are two big hands where I did not get big beated. That brought it down to two players, but I had a 9-1 chip advantage and won on the first hand.

Did I play well tonight? I dunno. I had bad cards and hung around long enough to give myself a chance, but it’s hard to take much credit for a crazy river straight. I made good calls on those A-kicker hands. I am impressed I played so few hands. I don’t know if it was the right strategy or not but it showed a lot of patience and discipline. Eh, who knows. So hard to figure out. That’s what you readers are for!

Tonight: $110 !
Running Total: $66, on the positive side again!

Paul P is gone. Paul went and got married and had himself a child. Since he hasn’t updated for six months, he’s outta here. Sorry Paulie!

Matt is in. In addition to regularly commenting on this blog, he has his own. Be a doll and send him some traffic.

It is well known how Dick Cheney has had his thumb on the scale for Halliburton throughout the Bush administration. A blatant conflict of interest. Only it turns out the conflict is not so blatant, as any profits he makes these days go straight to charity.

Matt Yglesias talks about the growing trend of parents holding their kid back a year so that they’ll be advanced relative to their class. With our oldest starting kindergarten in a couple weeks (by the way — who decided school starts in mid-August!? Absurd!) we’ve noticed this kind of jockeying from many parents.

I think it’s silly if not actually counter-productive. I would rather my child be around children who were a little bit more developed than him. It spurs him on. Maybe I’m being egotistical about his brains, but I think our kid will be bored a lot in school as is, if the level is dumbed down that much more it will be that much worse. Then there’s the overall time — you are robbing them of a year of adult life. When they are nineteen they don’t want to be stuck in school and you don’t want them around. It’s better for everyone if he grows up when it’s time to grow up.

Mrs. Muttrox adds: I couldn’t help contributing to this post as the education of young children is just about the only thing I can speak about with much authority these days. I’m split on this issue. I’ve seen kids “redshirted” for rational reasons- a child (usually a boy) who is slightly developmentally delayed and barely makes the age cut-off for kindergarten held back in pre-K for another year. Sometimes this makes sense. Kindergarten is not what it used to be. Many districts have all day kindergarten now. ALL kids are expected to be read, write, and understand fairly complex math concepts well before the end of kindergarten. Many boys just turning five are still working on the ability to sit still and follow directions for hours at a time, never mind accomplishing real academic milestones. Generally, girls at this age are better able to control impulses and have more developed verbal capabilities.Unlike what the article claims, this is the reason I’ve typically seen for the gender gap seen in higher education now. Girls start out ahead from the beginning and are more likely to naturally possess the skills lauded by teachers (listening, sitting still, following directions) which lead to continued success in school. I have a hard time believing the conclusion of the article that redshirting has led to gender inequality in higher education mainly because redshirting is a relatively new phenomenon which I doubt has had time to show such a long-term effect.

On the other hand, many parents in our area hold back boys with summer birthdays because of the “fear factor.” These boys are clearly ready for school but their parents feel that they will somehow be at a disadvantage by being younger, either immediately or in the future. I have heard future competitiveness in junior high sports used as a rational for keeping a child back. This seems to me yet another example of highly anxious suburban parents trying to micromanage their children’s lives in an attempt to ensure their future success. I also recently read that redshirting is further increasing disparities between high and low income children because this practice is a luxury of the prosperous. School is free day care, and many families simply can’t afford to pass it up. As a result, poorer children find themselves not only with less formal preparation for kindergarten (preschool, enrichment classes, etc), but also nearly a year younger than the more privileged children in their class. All that being said, I am relieved that our childrens birthdates coincidentally save us from having to make this decision.