More proof that the terrorists won

In the news yesterday is an alarmist article titled “People on terrorist watch list allowed to buy guns”. It should, more accurately, read “Innocent people allowed to buy guns”. Today CNN is running a poll asking if we think people on the watch list should be allowed to buy guns. Overwhelmingly (89%-11%) the answer is no. This is the wrong answer. A senator is introducing legislation to remove the right of these people to buy guns. But these people haven’t done anything wrong. They are not terrorists. They are suspects, but they are not even suspects of crimes committed, they are suspects of possible future crime. They are being denied their rights because of what they might do.

To put it in context: let’s say you are put on a list of those likely to have a fatal car accident, so you are forbidden to get a driver’s license, or buy a car. Is that right? Would that be acceptable if the list was 95% accurate? What if it was 50% accurate? How about 5% accurate? What percentage of the people on the terrorist watch list have actually committed or attempted to commit terrorism? I doubt those figures are public, but I can assure you the number is closer to 5 than 95. And for the record: car accidents kill far more Americans than either terrorists or guns do.

The ban would make no sense at any rate. Who is committing terrorism with guns? Planes, yes. Bombs, yes. Guns? Not so much. Guns are not the weapons of terror. Well, unless one is pointed right at you. But the point of terrorism is to scare people who are nowhere near the scene of the actual event. So clearly, if we’re taking freedoms away from innocent people in the name of fighting terror… the terrorists have succeeded. We are literally terrified beyond reason.

People on the list are an interesting group. As Bruce Schneier sums it up: They are too dangerous to let fly in an airplane, but too innocent to prosecute in a court of law. Where is the sense in that? Even some of our elected politicians have wound up with their names on the terrorist watch list. Of course, being well connected as they are, their names don’t stay there long. What about yours? And did you know that simply speaking out against the government can get you labeled a terrorist?

Amazon++

There’s been a lot of griping about Amazon lately, and what they do wrong. So I want to take a moment to point out something they did right. Amazon has made it possible to put items from any website onto your wishlist. This is freaking awesome. No longer do I have to collect a hodge-podge of wishlists and individual links to send to people who ask that twice-annual annoying question, “What do you want for (Christmas|your birthday)?”. I can put everything on my Amazon list, and send that out (linked for your convenience, in case you’re wishing to buy me something for my birthday). There is, of course, something in this for Amazon… but I think that it’s far more beneficial to users than to the company. And it’s also beneficial to companies that are not Amazon. Nice to see them doing something right for a change.

Size matters

I think I understand now why men love poker so much. Size matters. Oh, it’s not the only important thing… but a man with a large stack has a lot more power than a man with a short stack. This is the lesson I learned last night when I was playing a freeroll tournament on PokerStars (I’m wolfger88 if you care to look me up). Because I had a big stack, and boy was it going to my head. It changes the game. You can be more aggressive, and you can often get away with things that nobody else at the table can. Bluffing becomes very easy when you can force one or more of your opponents to choose between folding and going all-in. And when they do get gutsy and go all-in… if you win, your stack gets much bigger, and you can whack everybody else at the table with it that much more effectively.

I won round 1 at my table in a little over 30 minutes, and waited nearly 90 minutes for the rest of the tables to finish. Somewhere in round 2 of the tourney, I got too cocky, though. I crossed the line from aggressive to beligerent, started thinking with my stack instead of with my head… well, you can guess how that went. Size matters, but if you don’t know how to use it, you’ll lose it.

I wound up #364 out of 10,000. Not bad. And never again will I underestimate the amount of time I need to complete a tourney. If you keep winning, it’s an all-nighter.

A penny for your thoughts

Here are mine, for free

On my way in to work this morning, I was briefly stuck behind a Geo (Metro? Prizm?), and I remembered back when I was in college, and these cars were new. And tiny. And affordable. And not so fast with their 3-cylinder engines. We called them Penny Racers.

Which made me think about pennies, and how useless they are, and how I’ve heard that it costs more than a penny to make a penny, which is just plain dumb. I also thought briefly about Making Money, which makes hilarious fun of this (and which I haven’t finished reading yet).

In fact, older pennies (when they were mostly copper) are worth more if you melt them down into a chunk of metal than if you keep them in penny form. Which is why the government forbids people to melt 1-cent or 5-cent coins.

So I came across an article, because I can’t give this up now, stating that the price of zinc is rising, and soon the material cost of modern pennies will also be in excess of 1 cent. And it still costs more than a penny to make a penny because of all the non-material costs (equipment, man-hours, energy, distribution…). This article gives reasons for not discontinuing the penny, and the most absurd reason is this:

eliminating pennies would increase our reliance on nickels, which now
cost almost ten cents to manufacture and so generate even more negative
seigniorage, per coin, than pennies do

OK. Bear with me here a moment. It’s not rocket science. A 1-cent piece costs 1.7 cents to make. A 5-cent piece costs 10 cents to make. So here’s what you do: Discontinue the manufacture of 5-cent pieces. Declare that all current 1-cent pieces are now worth 5 cents. Retool the 1-cent dies so that they say “5 cents” instead of “1 cent”. Congratualtions! You no longer have a 1-cent piece, and your 5-cent piece now only costs 1.7 cents to manufacture! Genius!

Why should we stop using 1-cent pieces? We already don’t use them for the most part. I’ve seen people throw them away. I’ve seen people drop them by mistake and not bother picking them up because it isn’t worth the time and effort (and because we are fat, lazy Americans). The frugal among us have a penny jar, and we take it when it gets near full and either roll the pennies and sell them to the bank, or we (as fat, lazy Americans) pay 7% to Coinstar to have them do it for us. Or we leave them in the “have a penny, leave a penny” trays at convenience stores and gas stations. Which is really, in effect, saying “we don’t want pennies to exist”. So it’s time for the government to quit wasting fifty million dollars a year on making pennies.

Customer loyalty

Chrysler send me a coupon in the mail yesterday. It’s good until the end of the month for $1,000 off a new vehicle, for “customer loyalty”. In my book, people aren’t really loyal if you have to bribe them… But the reason I’m not using that coupon, aside from the shitty state of the economy and consequently my bank account, is that it’s only been 6 years and 165,000 miles since I bought my Jeep. It’s nowhere near time to replace it yet. And if it was in need of replacement already, I wouldn’t be feeling very loyal. I can understand an automaker’s desire to sell new cars fairly often, but I think the days of buying a new vehicle every 2 to 3 years are well behind us. People in Cuba still drive cars from the 50’s. I think Americans can stand to keep one car up and running for 10 years, at least.

Calvin and Hobbes go to the Dark Side?

Read a very interesting thesis on how Calvin and Hobbes grew into “Jack” and Tyler Durden, much like Annakin Skywalker becoming Darth Vader (except, of course, Fight Club portrays these characters as an anti-hero as opposed to Vader being painted an outright villain). It’s a bit of a stretch in spots (Robert Paulson is Moe?), but it’s an entertaining read that’s hard to argue with. If you’ve got a few minutes, check it out. And if you haven’t watched Fight Club yet, what the hell are you waiting for??!?

Aw crap, they found us…

Scientists couldn’t find penguins because of their camouflage, so instead they found penguin poop. Satellite pictures don’t show penguins, but the mess they make stains the ice a noticeable brown. Now they can track colony migrations and population densities.

NHL wants Pittsburgh victory

That’s the only conclusion I can come to. Sydney Crosby is the twinkle in the NHL commissioner’s eye, and they want to give him a Stanley Cup. They aren’t succeeding, but they are trying. How else can the lopsided officiating be explained?

Games 1 and 2 were back-to-back games, one day after the conclusion of the conference finals. Not having a day of rest between games in the playoffs is unheard of. Doubly so in the all-important finals. This is definitely advantage-Penguins, who are the younger and uninjured team, with 2 days off before the finals as opposed to the older Wings who wind up playing 3 games in 4 days and have several injured players.

In game one, a blatant trip resulting in a Penguin breakaway gets no call. Minutes later Detroit gets a slashing penalty for breaking somebody’s stick… no contact to the player’s body at all.

In game 2 it gets worse: a Pittsburgh player spears Detroit goaltender Chris Osgood in the chest, knocking him to the ice, and Evgeni Malkin instigates a fight with Detroit captain Henrik Zetterberg (and gets his ass whupped). Spearing is a 5 minute major and an automatic game misconduct. It also usually results in a suspension. The player was called for slashing instead… a 2 minute minor (with 19 seconds left to go in the game, it’s rather meaningless). Instigating a fight in the final minutes of the game is also an automatic suspension, but the NHL quickly rescinded the suspension so that Malkin, Pittsburgh’s top scorer (and the only Penguin to score against the Wings so far), won’t miss a game.

Oh, and Malkin’s jersey wasn’t tied down, which is an automatic game misconduct, but the referees didn’t assess that penalty. Not that it mattered with 19 seconds left on the clock, but I think my point is clear: rules are being bent if not outright broken in favor of Pittsburgh.

And they still can’t win.

I can’t wait until Datsyuk gets healthy again. And I can’t wait to see who throws what kind of cheapshot at the end of game 3 since it’s clear there aren’t any real repercussions for doing that sort of thing. The NHL is becomming a joke.

edit: I thought Malkin was the only Penguin to score on us, but it was pointed out to me that the Game 1 goal was Fedetenko, with an assist by Malkin. I was confused.

Epic WINE

In an ideal world, the operating system you choose for your computer wouldn’t affect which programs you can run. Of course, we don’t live in an ideal world, but we are getting closer. This morning, I read that Wil Wheaton is holding a little poker tournament today, on his old sponsor, PokerStars. I tried in the past to play in his tournaments, but PokerStars required me to install their (Windows-only) software to play. I tried to install it via Cedega, but it didn’t run right. But, being a perpetual optimist, I decided to check their site again today and see if maybe they supported other operating systems yet. I clicked the download button, and a screen popped up  in Firefox telling me this file is a Windows executable. It asked me what I would like to do with it, the default option being to open it with WINE. Sure, why not? It downloaded to my system and immediately launched into a familiar installation screen, and instantly ran. So far as I can tell, it runs flawlessly (maybe without sound?), and I’m up over $700 on the “play money” tables. This is it. This is the way it should be. I’m very happy with Ubuntu, WINE, Firefox, and any other team that made this a reality. It’s awesome when things “just work”.

Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!

Went last night to the Summer Wind Farms Sanctuary. I wasn’t sure what to expect, and I really wasn’t sure I’d rather be there on a rainy night than in front of the TV watching the Red Wings become the Western Conference Champions once again. I’m very glad I went, but I’m very upset I didn’t bring my camera. My real camera, that is. I took some surprisingly better-than-normal pics with my BlackBerry, but the quality is nowhere near what I could have had.

(edit: the pics link above, which I e-mailed to myself from Facebook, doesn’t seem to work. Try this one instead.)

So if you’re in SouthEast Michigan and have the chance to go here, do so! It’s so much better than the zoo. Especially if you love the big cats, like I do. Here they were actually active (well, the cool rainy weather helped) and close enough to get a very good look at, and you have a guide who will tell you about each animal and answer questions. We even had the opportunity to pet some animals (horses, cows, goats, a snake, and a tarantula).

Oh, and I watched the Wings on my DVR when I got home. No surprise, we won, and now it’s on to the Penguins rematch for our second straight Stanley Cup.