I got a call from my girlfriend yesterday and she had found out that Richard Dawkins was coming in town to give a lecture to UW students and the community. We found out about it on the day of the lecture and tickets were already out (tickets are free though). Some guy was selling his tickets and I offered $25 for the two, but he wanted $30 and I said no. We got a pretty good spot in the cancellation line so I decided to chance it that 20 people wouldn't show up and use their tickets. We eventually got in and the guy never sold his tickets lol. Richard Dawkins gave a pretty cool lecture on atheism while promoting his The God Delusion book (which is great, btw). It was really cool to see him speak in person. Overall, I was very pleased with the lecture "Religions run in families, Dawkins said. If we had been brought up in ancient Greece, we would all be worshiping Zeus and Apollo. If we had been born Viking, we would be worshipping Thor", he said. Then he showed a map of religions in the world and they were all fairly segragated by georaphic location. He played this video which bashes religious extremists and is pretty funny. Then my girlfriend asked him a question about how to find purpose without God and he gave a pretty solid response. He said humans tend to assign purpose to things that aren't there because purpose is so embedded in people's mind that they just assign it to everything. He also talked a little bit how purpose is evolutionary and good for survival because it really gets things done through motivation. He also somewhat implied or let the doors open for purpose being up to the individual to assign purpose and find meaning in their own lives and (obviously) just rejects that you need to believe. I wish I hadn't read the God Delusion and watched youtube stuff because I had heard about 75% of the lectgre already. If this was the first time I heard any of this, it would have been pretty mind blowing. I recommend trying to hear a lecture of his though.

Cardrunners is really picking up steam. I've always been impressed with all their innovative marketing and production. They just joined up with ftp, and I have to admit I'm a little jealous. It'd be cool to be a red name and get your own avatar, not to mention perks of rakeback etc. Maybe I'll make videos in the future if I could get decent compensation.

Also, the story about 60 minutes covering the Absolute Poker scandal will be lame. Fish can't see the difference between random high stakes cheating that will likely get resolved, and online poker being rigged. So it will just be bad press.

Also there's a really funny, sad thread I recommend where stealthmunk swears off women for the next 10 years for 10k where he stands to lose 20k (2:1). Thread is here. He seems pretty delusional if I've ever seen a delusional person before. What's most surprising is usually people this delusional aren't capable of making decent amounts of money.

I really got to stop playing 25/50 NL. I never seem to win anytime I try. I dropped 4 buyins today which is a lot for me. In the big pots, I only got it in good once, but I think I liked my play for most of it.

First hand I smoothcalled AA and DaEvils 3bets to about 650 first guy calls I make it about 1600 and DaEvils shoves AK hits two K's argh.

Next big hand was vs poopers and I really misplayed it. CO opens to 150 poopers on button makes it 550 I make it 1450 wiht TT and poopers calls. Flop like K43, chk chk. turn 2 I chk, poopers bets 500 into the 3k pot. for some reason I decide to shove (obv a brain fart) and he has AK.

Another hand some guy opens from MP (9 handed) with 33, I'm in sb and make a greater than repot raise with AQ. Flop comes 33s7s and I fire about 2/3 he calls. Turn was the Ks and I shoved it in and he has 33 for quads. I still like my play b/c I think he has to fold a lot of the hands he'd call the flop with.

Last hand I was on semitilt and opened 86s from sb and got reraised from BB, I shoved and he insta called with AQo which was kind've surprising how quick he called but oh well.

I was also playing Boosted J heads up for some unknown reason. I really need some sort of tilt control device that recognizes when I am on tilt and shuts off my computer. It seems like about once or twice a month I go on tilt and blow through a few buyins at 25/50.

I basically suck.

I just watched The King of Kong and I have to say it was a pretty fun movie. It's about these two video gamers competing for a high score in Donkey Kong for the arcade. They seem to think that it's one of the hardest games out there, but in reality, the record can't be that great because there hasn't been much competition over it, so I'd expect it to be nowhere near maxed. I imagine some of the hardest video games out there to be #1 are probably games like counterstrike, WOW, and other games where many people compete online. Also, the movie was kind've built around the premise that the old record holder was changing the rules on the new competitor saying that the new competitor had to get the record in person but the
old competitor could just film it. This was way overblown as the old record holder didn't really have a say in this in reality, but was because of the judges at twin galaxies that caused this.

I watched the GP 81 $3-6 NL, and I have to say I wasn't too impressed. Taylor assumes too much of his opponents as far as I know. I don't think most of them are reacting to his image too much. Most of his postflop play didn't really resemble people playing back at him too much. I think most of his opponents played the same way. I don't think his image really paid off very well, because for most of the postflop plays he did, he played the same way unless he was making goofy bluffs to "set up" his image. These kinds of plays would work a lot better at 10/20 though.

Reader's Digest article - Government Waste"
You know it's bad when a mainstream media outlet like Reader's Digest is saying we waste about 1 trillion a year. It'd be nice if this article got some national attention, even if it did though, the public's response would be to make more agencies to oversee this instead of cut agencies completely out. I was listening to some interviews with libertarians and they were saying that even if we elected a libertarian president it wouldn't even matter, because the system is doomed to fail. The only way to sustain is to completely abolish government. This will likely never happen.


Atlantic article - Religious Secularism"
On the plus side, it seems religion is getting less and less extreme. I'm still undecided if I'd rather have an atheist world or not. Religious indoctrination seems to be a decent way to trick poor people into having decent morals. As long as they don't get extreme and decide that their religion must spread (Islam is currently the forerunner for idiotic religious ideas), I don't really have much of a problem with them.

Poker has been going pretty lame lately. I've been playing about 3000 hands a day this whole month and I'm up only like 10k. Poker really does seem like an endless grind and I'm not sure how people put up with it at low stakes.

I guess I was oblivious to this whole issue for awhile assuming things were in gear and moving along in favor of gay rights and gay marriage. I was reading there's been recent federal legislation banning same sex marriage and anyways most states don't give the civil unions to homosexuals either. Completely baffling. But I guess the public is largely to blame b/c most people are still in favor of not allowing gay marriage for whatever reason (hint: idiotic reasons). It's something like over 50% oppose gay marriage

I was curious what percent of the american population was gay so i googled it and the first article I found was this article. I'm glad that's what people are reading! The whole premise of his argument was that roughly 3-5% of the population was gay, but that 20% of the population was abnormal because of "mental disorders". And since there are a lot more mental disorders than gays in the population, homosexuality should not be considered normal. *hands clap* Well thought out! Logically sound! I couldn't even believe that's the conclusions he was drawing. It's scary to me anyone can think like this, much less make it really high on the google chart.

A funny study I read said about murderers that killed gay people showed that more than 70% of the killers were aroused during gay porn suggesting that they just couldn't face the fact that they might be gay or bi.

I like the pop cultures take on it. It really parallels a lot of movements. It starts out attacking the fundamentalist opposition to liberty. Let's stop killing and randomly attacking people with this stated belief. These movies proliferate. Eventually people are slightly changed and not as outwardly belligerent to the group. Then whole shows and concepts are given to the group with the ideology to show how even though whatever law that granted this group some liberty, they still are being mistreated. More acceptance grows. People realize the group they hated before was largely unfounded. The people that still oppose giving liberty to whatever group is now repeatedly mocked until eventually only a small portion of people are bigots towards that group. It happened with blacks, it happened with women, it'll happen with gays too. It's really just a matter of time, but it's funny to see how obvious it is. We'll all look back at today's culture and be baffled at how bigoted people can be for no good reason.

In 1948, about 90% of American Adults opposed interracial marriage when the Supreme Court of California legalized it, and California became the first state that allowed loving, committed interracial couples to marry.

In 1967, about 72% were opposed to interracial marriage. This was the year when the U.S. Supreme Court was legalized interracial marriage everywhere in the U.S.

In 1991, those adults opposed to interracial marriage became a minority for the first time.

It's pretty obvious that we're gonna be looking back on this period in history in disbelief. I have to say when I saw that scene in Borat where he was talking to that guy about trying to kill the gays at the rodeo I was laughing in disbelief, but there has to be fairly widespread bigotry towrad the gays considering that the majority of the US is apparently against gay marriage.

The end.

P.S. I'm not a queer! I like teh vagine!

First some good news. My wonderful girlfriend through a surprise Simpsons themed birthday party for me. It was really fun. I'm super lucky to have her.

The bad news...Govt Spying Plan this kind of stuff really scares me. The basic gist of the article is that they're working on passing legisltation to give "the government the authority to examine the content of any e-mail, file transfer or Web search." Their rationale is "Privacy and security is a zero sum game". That can't possibly be true. It's not like everytime privacy goes down security goes up in a 1:1 ratio. This bill will eventually go through, maybe not this draft, but it's only a matter of time before it goes through. It's going to be nice once the govt has complete unwarranted spying power and the ability to blackmail anyone that communicates with anyone else. Each step in the government turning fascist is pretty predictable and inevitable as long as the public is blinded to why privacy is important. My guess is that the majority of people won't care about giving up all privacy rights until it's too late and the government is abusing it like crazy. By then, it will be too late.

I was reading The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins, today and it's pretty swell. In it he points out that there is a reasonable chance of life on other planets. He says there is between 1 and 30 billion planets in our Milky Way Galaxy, and there are probably about 100 billion other galaxies in our universe. When you view the universe as that big, it seems hard to believe that a personal God exists that cares about humans, their prayers, their actions, their emotions, etc. This of course assumes you believe in evolution and a universe older than 6000 years. Apparently a fair amount of my extended family doesn't, but oh well. I went to a religious university that some of my cousins were not allowed to go to because they taught evolution. I have a really hard time respecting people nowadays that don't believe in evolution/science. It's probably a petty thing of me to do, but we're living in such an amazing universe, and human knowledge is starting to really push the envelope of what was previously known. I'm guessing most of my fellow poker players also believe in evolution etc, but they probably don't have the history of coming from a conservative Christian background. One of the biggest clues is that gambling is considered a sin, lol. Having to overcome stigma from my religious family and finally understanding how elegant and awesome the discovery of evolution really is, is a pretty sweet feeling.

I have to really contain laughter at family parties when their primary reason for wanting their kid to go to private school is to avoid learning about evolution. Being in such stark denial of scientific fact is baffling to me.

If anyone knows some fun science books that talk about our universe in an interesting way, I'd be really interested in learning more :)

Are People Too Stupid to Decide for Themselves?

This is the big question I face. Are people so stupid that they cannot make their own decisions, that the only solution government intervention?

Do you want to live in a society that says, "YES" people are too stupid to know what's best for them, so the only way to HELP these people is to FORCE them by COERCION to do what's best for themselves? The US (and the rest of the world), largely thinks, YES, people are too stupid to decide what to do on their own. Compulsory, schooling starts at a young age because the government doesn't trust the public to become educated enough to perform high paying jobs. Many people accept this, because many people like the idealized middle class amounts of wealth, so we force kids to go to school. Are people too stupid to wear a seatbelt in a car? We say yes, and mandate wearing a seatbelt. Most people don't object to this law, because most people are smart enough to wear a seatbelt voluntarily. Are people too stupid to become addicted to harmful narcotics? Yes, so we ban them. Are people too stupid to not get loans that charge excessive interest rates? We impose usury laws. Are people too stupid to get homeowner's insurance? Yes, it becomes a law. Are people too stupid to travel in safe cars? Yes. The government then regulates them. Are people too stupid to eat unhealthy foods? Yes, the government bans trans fats. Are people too stupid to smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol? Yes, so the government imposes a "sin" tax in an effort to curb use.

What will come next? Is government going to mandate exercise for people too stupid to get exercise? Will government mandate political correctness upon conversations? Where can anyone draw the line on preventing people from harming themselves? Will government's prevent poor people from spending money on big screen tvs? The answer is, there will never be a line drawn in the government we have as we know it. Some of this may seem silly, but it is already happening as we know it.

The crux of the argument is that if people are too stupid to make decisions for themselves, what right does any one person have to FORCE them to make the "correct" decisions? The answer most people seem to think is that government is some special deity that knows best. Who determines what the "correct" decisions actually are? The answer given by most people is unfortunately AGAIN government. Why would anyone trust one small group of people to dictate what anyone can do with your own property (I define property as your own body and your posessions)?

The only LOGICALLY consistent way is to allow people to make their own mistakes with their property and let any person use any medium to try to PERSUADE anyone to making what the one person deems a correct decision, but ultimately people's property should be left to persuasion and not coersion.

The government is also, apparently, in the business of dictating morality. The government wants a morally upright country, but in reality, if an individual does not have the option to make an immoral decision without being jailed, has the person acted moral? If the US dictates that everyone must pray to God once a day and you do it, have you acted moral or do you just care more about freedom from jail rather than freedom to be moral? The answer is obviously, NO you have not made a moral upright decision, you have made a decision that prevents you from jail. Dictating morality will never make logical sense. Watching Kinsey recently reminded me of the old sex laws "no anal, no homosexual, no oral sex". These morality laws are all laughable in today's society now, but older generations used to think you should be allowed to dictate morality between consenting adults. Now those have gone out the window, but we still ban prostitution? Two consenting adults have now had sex, but it's "perverse" because money was transacted? Should we ban 20-somethings marrying wealthy 80-somethings, because they, are in all likelihood, just after his money? Of course not. We also dictate morality in terms of forced welfare through taxation. People should be forced to give money to the poor, because the government deems it immoral to not help them out. But who sets what one "deserves" to have? Government. Blindly giving money to someone never really helps them. It'd be much more efficient to TEACH them by compassion and persuasion how to get out of poverty rather than blindly redistribute weatlh and mess up incentives. Giving the poor a base line of benefits incentivizes them to save poor for the steady free lunches they provide and discourages them from ekeing up the financial ladder which is what built this country. So on top of welfare being unhelpful at solving problems but merely temporary bandaids, my BIGGEST problem is that large-scale organized theft (in the form of taxes) took place to fund this problem on the basis of forced morality (people well off should help those less fortunate).

I dare you to read For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto by Murray N. Rothbard and not become a Libertarian.
Also in audio book format for your ipod: For A New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto

Some of the most interesting things to me in the world are the sets of arbitrary boundaries that people seem to cling to. I always like to push boundaries and challenge ideas of truth. One of the reasons I dislike government and religion is that they seem to force their opinions of arbitrary boundaries on others. The religion I was brought up in said "no sex before marriage" which seems arbitrary to me. Does that mean oral sex is okay? Does that mean the day before your wedding you are sinning if you have sex? What's the difference? Government dictates that it's okay for a 18 year old to have sex with a 19 year old, but not a 17 year old with an 18 year old? I like the idea of a 16 and 17 year old having sex and that being acceptable, but then the 17 year old has a birthday and it's not allowed. I also laugh at the arbitrary distinction of acceptable and unacceptable drugs. Alcohol and tobacco are okay, but marijuana not okay? Also you have to be 21 to drink alcohol? That is laughable. As if everyone has some sort of responsibility breakthrough on their 21st birthday. Those are all pretty obvious. Religion (and government) have even stepped in on what's acceptable types of sex between consenting people. I recently watched the movie Kinsey and laugh at the time when homosexual acts, oral sex, masturbation, and others were all condemned and sometimes imprisoned over. I look forward to a society that allows two consenting adults to do whatever they want. How can prostituion be illegal? That's akin to making Christianity illegal imo.

One of the funniest boundaries IMO is minimum wage. Not only is it arbitrary and pointless, it's completely harmful to the people that it claims to help. The people that think they are being helped don't even realize that they are losing jobs because of it. Everyone should be entitled to their own opinions and I laugh when people think otherwise. The amazing part is that no opinion is objectively right or wrong, yet wars are fought over them.