Archive for February 2008
Are you reading for free?
What i I told you that you could read several of the finalists for the 2007 Science Fiction Nebula awards for free online? You’d be pretty damn happy, I suspect. I am. You might want to bookmark the website or its RSS feed, as they seem to recently be posting links to anything free online…
Read More“Battle Company Is Out There” – NYT Magazine
One of the best perspective pieces on the challenges in the Afghan war against the Taliban and the foreign insurgents was in this sunday’s NYT magazine. It’s told in my personal favorite style, focused on the activities on one individual, at a low level in the organization, in the middle of the maelstrom. It centers…
Read MoreI wish I built satellites for a living.
Now that the US and China have shown that they’re capable of taking out each other’s satellites, planners in the Pentagon and Dept. of Commerce are going to start counting how many satellites they need in orbit to function as backup in case another foreign power tries to take a few out. For redundancy, they’ll…
Read MoreYet another work conversation
Mimi: Hey, you are becoming famous! Me: No, I’m Internet-famous, it’s a lower standard. Andy Warhol said, "In the future everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes." Shabbir says "Everyone you know is internet-famous, you just haven’t noticed."
Read More“In God We Trust, all others bring data.” -Edward Deming
You’ve known that I have for a long time tried hard to figure out what is the appropriate session length in poker. It’s so much harder than Sklansky’s clever but not useful cliche, "Don’t quit winners", or Mike Caro’s advice "You’re always even" (so don’t try and get even before you leave the game). So…
Read More“Hillary for you and me, bring back our democracy”
Yes Hillary let’s bring back democracy, starting with letting the courts enforce our Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure. Perhaps you’ll get a chance to vote on it? FAIL
Read MoreFree comics: Freakangels, Girl Genius, Planet Karen, xkcd
As many of you know we’re down to a one income family since Sarah got laid off. It’s a long story, but the financial model of commercial real estate loans involves reselling the loans as commercial mortgage backed securities and not holding them. The people that bought those securities took a bath on their subprime…
Read MoreHillary Clinton skips telecomm immunity vote, Obama stands up for our Fourth Amendment rights
One of the major casualties of the war on terror, along with my optimism and my trust, has been American civil liberties. We have given away so much in such little time against an enemy that has become a rhetorical device. “There is a very important choice and a big difference between the candidates in…
Read MoreMy Sesame Street character
Is it worth pointing out that Sarah took this test and discovered she was Ernie? No, the thing has too few choices for that to be something worth noticing as interesting. It’s bound to happen all the time. By the way, Sarah would like to point out that "a little evil" is a very accurate…
Read MoreMy 2007 poker results.
This is overdue, but I’ve been freakin’ busy with work and family life. These numbers are stored in PokerTracker and every session is logged, so the quality is good. Let’s recap what I vowed to do in 2007 after the lessons I learned in 2006: Stop playing online poker for real stakes. I lose money…
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