Quick Hitts

When my kids were little I watched Sesame Street with them, and some of the jokes were obivously aimed at adults. I remember Cookie Monster, sitting in a big leather chair in a library, smoking a pipe and announcing, “This Is Alastair Cookie, bringing you Monster Piece Theater.” My kids didn’t know why I was laughing – that joke wasn’t in there for them.

Some of the original shows have been released on DVDs, but according to this article (sent to me by Michael Tighe of thecheapstudent.com) they carry a warning: ““These early ‘Sesame Street’ episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today’s preschool child.”

Cookie Monsters pipe was too offensive. According to Carol-Lynn Parente, “That modeled the wrong behavior” — smoking, eating pipes — “so we reshot those scenes without the pipe, and then we dropped the parody altogether.” Oscar was too grouchy. Parente said, ““We might not be able to create a character like Oscar now,” she said.

And the pussification of America continues. . .

Of course, it’s not limited to America. In Australia, Santas are being told to say “ha ha ha” instead of ‘ho, ho, ho” because someone might misunderstand and think he’s calling someone a whore. I’m sorry, if you’re that easily offended, if your brain is so poorly developed that you find that offensive, rest assured that we’re far more offended at your stupidity than you are at this innocuous phrase. And you’re probably a ho too.

Yesterday, Annie Duke testified to the House Committee on the Judiciary about playing poker on line: Why it should be legal, why the whining nannies lament about compulsive gambling is ridiculous, why the “for the chillllllllllldreeeeen” bleat is sensless, how poker is a game of skill, not luck, and quite a few other related issues. Here are a few excerpts:

“Of course, opponents of gaming will cite the incidence of compulsive gambling and the possible exposure of minors as reasons to prohibit it. With respect to compulsive gambling, this committee has received expert testimony confirming what most academic studies on compulsive gambling have found: that the incidence of problem gambling in the population of adults who engage in gambling activity is less than 1%. From a similar study in the United Kingdom, we know that the availability of betting over the Internet does not increase it over time. Furthermore, even if one’s primary concern were the very small incidence of compulsive gambling, then licensing and regulation offer more effective and less intrusive means to combat it.”

“Of course, prohibitionists point to the possibility of children betting online as the other justification for prohibiting it. In fact, most people who seek to restrict individual freedom invoke protection of children as their motivation. I suspect they find that that argument has more resonance than what is often their real motivation — to treat adults like children, and manage their choices for them.”

“To reiterate: if your concern in this matter is about children, there are solutions available. If, instead your interest is in treating adults like children, then there are not.”

“The vast majority of Internet poker players are doing so for recreation and entertainment. On average, a person spends $10 a week playing online poker. 10 dollars! You can’t even get a movie ticket for that price where I live!”

“In the proposed rule issued by the Department of the Treasury and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, the regulators come right out and say that they cannot and will not tell the regulated community what constitutes an unlawful Internet wager. Let me emphasize — the posture of the Federal government is, “We are going to create a new federal crime, but we will not tell you what it is.” In the proposed rule, the regulators explain their refusal to resolve this by saying that to do so would require them to examine the laws of the federal government and all 50 states with respect to every gaming modality, and that this would be unduly burdensome. Yet that is exactly what they are requiring the general counsel of every bank in the country to do.”

Read the entire transcript here.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving is suing Mothers Against Illegal Aliens for using “Mothers Against” in their name. Their C&D letter said “MADD cannot be associated with your organization and the use of “Mothers Against” gives a strong implication of a relationship with MADD.”

Not really. As the writer of this blog discovered, a quick Google of “Mothers Against” returns hundreds of “Mothers Against” organizations.  Why they went after this one is anyone’s guess.

M.A.D.D, like every other nanny organization, is a fountain of made up numbers and fake statistics. Their favorite, of course, is the number of drivers killed in “alcohol related accidents.” Note the careful phrasing. We’re not talking drunk drivers here, we’re talking alcohol related. If the driver swallowed his mouthwash before going to work and blew .01 on a breathalyser, that’s alcohol related, even though no sane person would consider that drunk. If a driver hits a drunk pedestrian, that’s alcohol related. If the driver is stone cold sober but his passenger had a few, that’s an alcohol related accident.

I’d suggest that they change their name. Just shorten it by one letter, to M.A.D: Mothers Against Drinking. They are no longer going after drivers who are actually drunk. Their goal is prohibition, one baby step at a time.

At one point, they used the motto “Impairment starts with the first drink.” They’ve dropped that, removing it entirely from their web site. Perhaps they realized they were jumping the gun by a few years. But a few quotes from their literature shows where they’re really coming from.

”Promoting ‘responsible drinking and driving’ is like promoting ‘responsible drive-by shootings’.”—MADD’s Driven Magazine, Fall, 1997

Forget limits on BAC. It’s just not acceptable to drink and drive, period” – Madd President Wendy Hamilton.

“Lowering the legal [arrest] standard will be a deterrent for light drinkers as well as heavy drinkers. There is no safe blood alcohol level, and for that reason, responsible drinking and driving means no drinking and driving.”—Catherine Prescott, former President, MADD.

“…we do not want to overlook the casual drinker. If you choose to drink, you should never drive. We will not tolerate drinking and driving-period.”—MADD President, Karolyn Nunnallee.

Source: this informative, very ugly site.

A well done breakdown of how M.A.D.D lies with numbers can be found here. And you know you can trust it, because it’s published by Modern Drunkard Magazine.

The Great American Smokeout is November 16th, and we’re making plans to participate. I’ll be getting together with several cigar smoking buddies and we’ll smoke…out. We’ll start with a round of cigars, filling the air with thick tobacco smoke and light conversation. Then we’ll all have a very nice, very unhealthy dinner, followed by even more cigars.

All smokers should make a point to smoke publicly and obviously on this day. If you’re a non-smoking freedom lover you can still make a statement. Buy a big cigar and pretend. (And try lighting it up – you might find you like it.) Use this as an opportunity to make a statement about the whiney, sniveling, pussified, wimpy, nanny, lipidleggin society we’ve become.

Use caution, though, when participating in similar events for the first time. A few years ago I misinterpreted the intention of the Great American Meat Out and really embarrassed myself.

The Calafornia fires are being blamed, of course, on GW: Global Warming and the president, who, as we know, is to blame for all the global warming in the world. The underbrush is dry from GW, they say, so it burns hotter and makes it difficult to put out the fires.

But wait…why is the underbrush even there? Before man started managing forests, fires were nature’s way of cleaning out the underbrush. Slow burning fires would burn off small trees, shrubs, fallen branches, dead leaves and debris. Old hardy trees usually survived fires intact. It’s an important part of the natural cycle. Fire is so much a part of the natural process that some species of pines, such as the Monterey Pine and Pond Pine, produce tightly sealed cones that only release their seeds when there’s a fire.

But now, every time there’s any kind of a fire, we (i.e. the government) runs in to put it out, no doubt singing “Here I come To Save The Daaaaaaaaay” en route. The fire is quelled and everyone feels wonderful about themselves, but the brush never gets burned off. “Environmentalists” fight attempts to remove the brush, sometimes making it illegal for homeowners to even clear their own property.  So the brush accumulates. And accumulates. And accumulates. When it finally does catch fire, there’s so much dry, easily burned fuel that it gets out of control very very fast. Old, magnificent trees that survive normal fires are destroyed by the intensity of the flames, all because of man’s “help.”

And then, of course, it’s blamed on Global Warming. Or the other GW. Or both.

From the Department of Really Bad Design:

When you’ve won the pot without going to the showdown, how often should you show your hand? Approximately never.

Poker is a game of incomplete information. The less people know about your playing style the better off you are. Every time you reveal a hand you didn’t have to you’re giving your opponents free information on how you play.

I used to show kings and aces when I won a tournament hand without a showdown, to implant the idea that I only played solid hands. I thought this would make it easier for me to pull off a bluff later on. Then I saw other players doing it, realized it was a transparent and useless move, and stopped.

Last weekend, fairly early in a multi-table table home tournament, I folded a garbage hand that several people called. A king came up on the flop, and everyone checked to M, who went all in. The next to bet was his wife, who had a hard time deciding what to do. “I know him,” she said, “He’s got something.” She showed me her hand, a pair of queens. After thinking about it some more she folded. So did everyone else. He smiled and flashed his cards to the guy sitting on the other side of him. I caught a glimpse of them – garbage. It was a stone cold bluff.

About twenty minutes later I was in the big blind with a 9,7 off suit. Several people limped in, letting me see the flop for free. It came up K, 9, 5. Everyone checked to M, who said “I’m all in.”

I had just a few more chips than he did. If I lost this hand I’d be crippled and effectively out of the tournament. He smiled. I didn’t pick up on any tells, but his demeanor was the same as when he had bluffed his wife out of the pot. I said “You’re full of it. You ain’t got it. Call.”

Everyone else folded and we flipped our cards. He had a five in his hand. My pair of nines held up. I nearly doubled my stack and knocked him out of the game. It turned out that was a pivotal hand for me, giving me a chip lead to exploit. I finished third, in the money.

Someone at the table said “Wow, that was a great read.” I just smiled. I wasn’t going to tell him how I did it, how M had inadvertently given me the information I needed to beat him by revealing his hand to someone else. After all, poker is a game of incomplete information.