Some thoughts on Television
Topic: Television
Utility is non-linear.

'Deal or No Deal' has been a surprise hit. It's such a remarkably simple idea that it's a surprise it hadn't been done before. I've watched bits of it and to be fair, although I know it's drivel, it has held my attention for 15 minutes or so, which isn't bad.

As a gambler, what interests me is how people decide whether to deal or not. Most people are very risk-averse from what I've seen. For instance in the repeat I just saw today, a woman faced five boxes with a combined total worth of #61k. So her 'equity' was just under #12k. She took a deal at #6,125.

Should she be criticised for this? I think many people would take a deal that was below their equity. In fact, I reckon that the show should be retitled to refect that. I propose 'Utility is non-linear'. Catchy isn't it?

It's obviously the case that your happiness would increase more if your net worth rose from nothing to #1m than if it rose from #1m to #2m. But where do we draw the line? What would influence us? I think that the presence of a live audience makes people take poor deals. I think some people are afraid of looking stupid and walking away with 10p after being offered #6k.

"If it's 9.30, then that's not the disease".

I'm a big fan of the medical drama House on Channel Five, Thursday nights. Hugh Laurie is brilliant as the misanthropic doctor - a truly inspired piece of casting. Having made his living playing stupid English men, who would have thought of having him as an intelligent American? Not me, that's for sure.

But much as a I love the show, it has a big flaw that is common to other "detective" stories. You know that the solution will only be discovered three minutes before the end of the show. So when it looks like the patient is only suffering from a simple lung infection and a course of antibiotics will do the trick, you can be absolutely sure he'll convulse on the floor with a bleeding foot fifteen seconds later.

I first noticed this problem when I used to watch WWF wrestling years ago when Dominic shared the flat with me. We could tell that the main event wasn't over by looking at the clock. So the fact that The Undertaker was pinning Val Venus to the canvas at 11.51pm meant absolutely nothing. There was at least 6 minutes left to go. I found there was more suspense when we taped the show and watched it the next day. I'm not sure how that works for House, Morse, Prime Suspect etc. Probably best to watch a tape of it and cover up all the clocks in the room.

Team Poker

I was idly scanning the channels a couple of nights ago when I suddenly realised that I was watching John Kabbaj's wife playing poker. It was part of some dire 'team' poker show. It was such crap that I'm not going to bother looking up its name. Apart from the obvious fact that poker is not a team event, I hated it anyway. In the Russia vs Ireland heat that I was watching, they had given the Russians red shirts to wear ... with the Hammer and Sickle embossed over the chest!

The Soviet Union was disbanded in 1991. Has nobody told Sky this? I felt genuinely embarrassed for the Russians. Some of them may have lost family members to the salt mines of Siberia or the famines of the early 20th century. Will they give the Germans swastikas to wear?

Energy? Oh that's free!
Topic: Misc.
I was looking at Wikipedia this morning, doing some background reading as I do every day, when I decided to check out estimates of the oil deposits under the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. I'm interested to know how long the US could survive without foreign oil. The estimate I found is that there is enough to supply 100 per cent of the US's needs for between 215 and 590 days.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_Refuge_drilling_controversy

Taking one year as a rough mid-range and adding this to the stocks held privately and in the Strategic Petroleum reserve (another five months combined) gives 17 months, excluding production from California and Texas, for which I don't have the figures. That gives America about a year and a half of independent foreign policy.

Of course in reality it's hard to imagine the US not being supplied by Canada, which is already its largest foreign supplier. And there's Mexico too, which is unlikely to cut supplies to the US. I reckon that the US could survive without Middle-Eastern oil longer than the Middle-East could survive without US money.

But it's all irrelevant as it turns out, at least if the British hacker wanted for extradition to the US is correct. He insists that while hacking into the computers of all the US armed forces, plus the Department of Defence and NASA, he uncovered evidence that the US is covering up the discovery of alien technology

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/4977134.stm

So that's it folks. No need to worry about Hubbert's peak, the Chinese in Sudan or any of the other bugbears that bother my most persistent readers. Just get that alien technology in your car!

It would be great if it were true. Alas I fear someone is setting up a great insanity defence.

Mohammed Afroze.
Topic: Politics
Hat tip to James Feeny for pointing me to a page on the British National Party's website, which claims that a fifth bomb was intended to explode in the London Tube network on July 7th, directly underneath the Thames, thereby drowning thousands of passengers. Allegedly the police foiled the attack the day before.

I can't give a lot of credence to the story, given its source. While I don't want to call the Party liars on my blog, I can imagine some readers of this blog drawing the conclusion that the story has been fabricated to create animosity towards foreigners and non-white Britons. So that isn't why I mention it.

Instead, what I find interesting about the whole affair is that there is someone in jail right now charged with plotting to destroy Tower Bridge and the House of Commons on September 11th 2001. And I'm fairly sure that most people have never heard of him. His name is Mohammed Afroze and he's serving a seven-year jail term in India for "criminal conspiracy, conspiracy to disturb relations between friendly nations, and forging documents".

The Times has the story here:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1705386,00.html

I find it remarkable that this story is never discussed. If someone in the BNP thought that a scare story about more bombings in London would get them publicity, they were wrong.

Poker sponsorship.
Topic: Poker
This is very funny. Because it's all true:

http://www.thepokerchronicles.com/archives/000773.html

Moral comparisons.
Topic: Politics
Does anyone here read Juan Cole? I do from time to time. I respect the fact that he can read and speak Arabic (more the former than the latter) and that he puts in a lot of effort to pick up stories from the middle eastern media. But I'm often left baffled by the moral comparisons that he draws. Here is an instance from June 26th last year (see bottom of page):

"By the way, rightwing US commentators often slam Iranian elections because the candidates are vetted by the clerical Guardian Council for their loyalty to the Khomeinist ideology. In the past two years, the vetting has grown ever more rigorous, excluding relative liberals from running for parliament or president. The commentators are correct.

However, in the United States the "first past the post" system of winner-takes-all elections and the two-party system play a similar role in limiting voters' choices of candidates. Neither libertarians nor socialists are likely to be serious contenders for the presidency in the United States, since neither of the two dominant parties will run them. The US approach to limiting voter choice is systemic and so looks "natural," but US voters have a narrower range of practical choices in candidates than virtually any other democratic society."

Bizarre! He's equating direct 'vetting' of candidates by the Guardian Council for conformance with the ideology of one person, the late Ayatollah Khomeini, with indirect 'vetting' of candidates for conformance with the views of the majority of American voters! His comparison takes no account of the fact that in the former case, candidates get rejected for having views that might actually be popular with voters, while in the latter case they are rejected because their views won't be. How can someone so otherwise intelligent make such a fatuous comparison? The world of academia seems to be full of this.

Steyn on the Palestine panacea.
Topic: Politics
A writer to Mark Steyn says what some people, including some readers of this blog, think:

Thanks, for your opinions. My, opinion, is: give back Palestine, to the Palestinians. Then the Middle East problems would be gone. And, no 9-11.

Dave Salvador
Hanford, California


MARK REPLIES: Who's gonna "give" it back? You? Is it yours? Is it the international community’s? And if you're giving it "back" to someone, shouldn't the British and the Turks be first in line? And, if we have to "give back" territory, can we give back your town to the Mexicans? Oh, and if you think Palestine is the root cause of 9/11 then perhaps you should read the texts of Osama bin Laden's various keynote addresses, where it's a lower priority than the US troops in Saudi Arabia and the end of the Caliphate in 1922 and the fall of Andalucia in 1492 and even the independence of East Timor. A whole lotta givin' back in there.

It's easy to take refuge in the "soft option". Even assuming you could take Palestine off the Israelis and give it to someone else, that would make not a jot of difference to the spread of the Islamist ideology. Indeed, in Europe – which is, after all, where the 9/11 cell was formed – Bosnia and Chechnya were far bigger motivators for Islamism. But dream on. A lot of other folks are.

I should stress that this isn't an argument against Palestinians getting something called Palestine. That may or may not be the right thing. The point is that it's not the cure-for-all-ills that some people think it is.

Have they looked behind the curtains?
Topic: Politics
As I hope readers will now realise, while I dislike Islamism and Islamists, I trust the 'Arab street' enough to think that if actally allowed to see Islamists in power, they will lose faith in them. And so it is that I'm actually quite pleased that Hamas won the Palestinian election, as it starts the process of disillusionment now rather than later.

It's looking good so far! The Palestinian Authority's Foreign Minister has managed to lose $450,000 in cash from his hotel room while on a trip to Kuwait. Yep, could have happened to anyone I suppose.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/709679.html

Remember that the authority is supposed to be broke and unable to pay its own staff's wages. No wonder the minister was so keen to keep this under wraps. It wasn't likely to stay secret in Kuwait though, as Kuwaitis remember how the Palestinian workers there welcomed the invasion by Saddam in 1990. They were not too popular after that and I'm sure the authorities didn't mind embarrassing them with exposure.

What was the money intended for? What will the unpaid civil servants in Gaza and the West Bank make of this? Or the voters in a place where GDP per head is under $1,000 per year? They deserve an answer.

World? Poker Tour.
Topic: Poker
Congratulations to regular Sleepless in Fulham reader Roland de Wolfe for winning just over $1 million at the WPT championship event in Las Vegas on Monday. It says something about the buoyancy of the poker economy that he got his million for coming third! Since learning of his big win, I've had a few thoughts about these big field poker events and I'm not sure I'm happy about my conclusions.

Firstly, the fact that he got his seven figure payout on day seven suggests to me that poker is starting to resemble those dance marathons of the depression era of America, where endurance was the key factor. This has to be to the benefit of local players, because of the jet lag and sleep adjustment factor. When I went to Austria in March to play the €2,000 NL event, I arrived the day before and got a good night's sleep. I walked to the casino from my hotel and felt lively and confident. However after nine hours I was exhausted. Clearly I'd needed more rest.

Secondly, the name World Poker Tour is increasingly inappropriate when about 90 per cent of the events are in one country. I appreciate that the US is the biggest market for the game, but some attempt to broaden the geographical base is required. This year Ultimatebet's Aruba competition, one of the few previous non-US events, drops off the schedule. So unless I'm mistaken, that only leaves Paris and the Bahamas.

Unfortunately, I am not sure that there is much that the WPT can do about it. Europe has enough players to support another event, but where is there the free space? I believe that Amsterdam has turned them down, while the EPT has signed up Barcelona, the Victoria, Baden, Copenhagen and Monte Carlo. Ireland has held some large events, but looking forward there are major legal uncertainties about the status of Irish gaming clubs. Germany has some casinos that are unsigned, but their staff are notoriously rude and unhelpful. The rake in any side games would be a joke. What does this leave? Helsinki?

For all the talk of a poker explosion, it's sad to see that there aren't many places where you can stage big events in Europe.

Provision does not require ownership.
Topic: Politics
Remember the last time that you had a really lousy time in a restaurant; rude service, poor food, dirty tables, unhygienic lavatories and over-priced drinks? Remember how you swore that you would go there again and give their accountant more money, cross your fingers and blithely hope that things would get better for your next visit?

Didn't you? OK, please yourself then. Perhaps you're one of those normal people who decided to take their business elsewhere. Like anyone would actually.

Well that's the problem with the NHS in a nutshell. You don't need to know anything about fundholding, waiting lists, citizens' charters or brain surgery. You just need to know that you pay for it in a way that’s totally different to the way you pay for everything else in life. That’s enough to make you realise that it’s doomed. It was poor under the Tories and after nearly nine years of a Labour government it’s still poor. And that’s after huge increases in tax. Why is this?

Well dare I say it, but maybe it’s got something to do with the fact that you can’t take your money away if you’re dissatisfied? Not if, like most people, you can’t afford private care. You have no threat. Targets can come and go, but the poor punter doesn’t have a choice.

I know that many people reading this will argue that the NHS was underfunded under the Tories. Maybe it was. I have no idea what the ‘correct’ budget should have been. Neither do you. Perhaps you think it would improve with more money now. Maybe it would. I don't know. But if you’ve followed the newspapers or just looked at their Jobs sections, you’ll realise that there has been a big increase in hospital administration. Was this really what the voters wanted when they booted out Major in 1997?

When health is politicised, but not privatised, politicians will still attempt to improve it. But without a free market, the mechanism to ensure that the money is well spent is very indirect. If you don’t like what the politicians are doing to the Health Service on which your life depends you can vote them out at the next election in up to five years time, but wouldn’t you rather have the option to take your business to a better performing service now?

Many Britons are proud of the NHS, believing that it’s right and proper that everyone should be able to get treatment that’s free at the point-of-service. I can understand that. So it’s fine by me if you want to make it free for everyone. But that doesn’t mean that the government needs to own the hospitals or employ any of the doctors and nurses. Provision doesn't require ownership. They are totally different concepts.

Anyone who’s travelled to the US knows this intuitively anyway. The last time I went there I had a travel insurance policy that I'd bought at the Post Office. It covered me for potential medical costs up to $10m. That is what I needed. I was under no illusion that the British Post Office actually owned any hospitals in the US, nor that it employed any doctors there. I just knew that it had made arrangements to pay for its policyholders to receive treatment should they need it. Why can't the NHS work like that either? Why can't I have insurance coverage guaranteed by the government, but with me having the choice of various competing insurance companies to select from? Hospitals that employed too many administrators and too few nurses would slowly lose custom to those who did the opposite. And this would give the health providers the incentive to cut paperwork and focus on hiring those who actually roll up their sleeves and care for the sick, instead of paper pushers. That’s what I’m interested in paying for.

It’s hard to discuss the NHS. Over the years it’s gone beyond rational discussion. But discussion is need if we’re to change it so that it saves more lives than it does. Don't take my word for it if you don't want to. See what the Observer's Health Editor said in 2001.

Why the NHS is bad for us, by Anthony Browne – Observer Health Editor 2001

In the meantime, I must weep for the opportunity that the Tories have wasted to promote this philosophy. Hague had no chance of winning the 2001 election. The voters were clearly in a mood to punish the Tories for the Major era for years to come. That was the ideal time to promote the idea of reform. It takes years for voters to consider radical change. So it’s tragic that the opposition party didn’t make the case years ago.

Update to 'What price Romance?'
Topic: Misc.
I got a reply to my e-mail today. I should explain that my e-mail to her was more strongly worded than the last post may have made clear. I went as far as to say that most women are boring.

Hello DY

Thanks for your reply inside you provided me with a missing puzzle piece I hadn't thought of, so I am very grateful.

You are of course quite right about the politics, current affairs note. I do discuss things with my friends but they are always light hearted, being in a creative industry, it tends to be more about art, peoples perceptions, and of course relationships. I don't read magazines, and somewhat disillusioned with history repeating itself quite so often I no longer read the newspapers either. The media seem to be obsessed with whipping up the general public into a permanent state of frenzy, I'm still waiting for the killer bees of 2004 to attack!

I am trivial, I am flighty, I would rather talk about human nature and anomalies than discuss a good book (don't read those anymore either), and perhaps I am becoming a paler version of myself and have let a lacklustre attitude creep in. My conversations are very samey, the content has little that is new too myself in it, to bring to the table. I do however have a great sense of humour and the best friends in the world.

However you are right I do need to shape up or ship out! So thank you for highlighting that I shall endeavour to do better!

As to the money, in previous years I funded an ex-boyfriend for two years whilst he re-trained. Now years later I am a single and poor as a church mouse as my circumstances changed. This which means although I don't overtly want a mans money, I struggle to keep up financially and it is a cheek that I should look for a relationship at all when I can only buy one round a week if that!

What I meant was in the circles within which I move at present, social and business wise, I meet both young and old successful men who have found they enjoy their own company more often than not. Having a female around is ok for an afternoon, perhaps even a whole day, but that's enough! I do understand their
perspective. I just like those rare types like myself who enjoy company the majority of the time rather than minority.

I think it is a reflection of living in an affluent area, where if you get bored you just get on a jet and have an adventure, alone or with your mates.

So please don't take offence to what I have written. I probably don't deserve a relationship because I cannot fund one, but we all have dreams.

Kitten x

What price romance?
Topic: Misc.
Do you read lonely hearts ads? I do, mostly for amusement value. However I also think they provide insights into a society and its culture. I've noticed in British ads for example that any mention of race is generally placed by someone who wants to date someone of a different one (lots of black women wanting white men) while in the US, it's mentioned by people wanting the same (SWF wants SWM).

I also can't help noticing when women use the words 'solvent' to describe their target man. Technically I qualify, as my assets exceed my liabilities. But it still rankles me to see the word in an ad, as it suggests that something beyond companionship is being sought.

At Craigslist London, the personals are full of American women looking for British men. Most are in the US and are planning a trip to Britain in the future. I can't understand why they don't just wait until they get here. What's the point in worrying about it six months in advance? But the personals page is also used by frustrated people to ask what is wrong with the opposite sex. Today I found a classic example:

http://london.craigslist.org/w4m/152630472.html

A 40-year old single woman asks: "what’s so wrong in wanting to share what’s happened in your day with a partner, to want to spend time getting to know someone without leaping into bed. What happened to good conversation being fun enough?"

I've never written back to someone on that page before, but today I decided to do so in order to explain something very obvious to me - that heterosexual men do like sharing what's happened in their day and having good conversation. They have male friends with whom they can do that. What they can't do with those male friends is leap into bed. QED?

In my case, I would love to have more conversation with women, but the topics I like talking about are things that most women don't talk about. With my male friends it's poker, politics, military history, the economy, conflict in the middle east, the horses and football betting. We virtually never talk about the things that feature in women's magazines - nutrition, haircuts, fashion, emotions or sex. I guess we find the external more interesting than the internal.

But that wasn't all I said to the frustrated 40-year old. I simply had to point out that she'd mentioned money in the first sentence "We all know there are those men who have enough money...". She couldn't write eleven words without slipping it in. No wonder she can't find what she's looking for. If you're going to discriminate on grounds of wealth, then at least be subtle about it!

Other issues in the Middle East
Topic: Politics
I've had some curious reactions to my post about Syriana below. It seems some people think my feelings about the film were 'predictable' because of my support for Israel. This puzzles me, because Israel isn't mentioned in the film. None of the action takes place there.

I have tried to explain that there are other issues in the Middle East apart from the Israel/Palestine conflict, but some of you don't believe me. Perhaps you need to read it from someone other than me. So I suggest that you read this Al-Jazeera article about the UN initiated Arab Human Development Report of 2002.

Do read the whole thing.

Syriana
Topic: Misc.
On March 20th I wrote "I've little or no desire to see the issue films of George Clooney, as I don't want to be subjected to their biased point of view" and never got around to explaining what I was talking about. In case it wasn't obvious, I was referring to "Syriana" and "Good Night, and Good Luck". Today I changed my mind about the former.

I was in part prompted by an article by Max Boot in the LA Times, in which he argued that several of the earlier films in which George Clooney stars make the opposite case to the views he expresses in person. It was something I had noticed myself with respect to Three Kings, a film that pointed out the pointlessness of defeating Saddam Hussein in 1991, only to leave him in power on the dubious grounds of 'stability'. I also found it disturbing the way that so many of the Iraqi characters in that film scream 'Where is George Bush?' when their uprising against Saddam fails to get American support, despite previous promises.

So I went to see Syriana and came out ... bewildered frankly. I loved the visuals - the streets of Beirut, the vast expanses of desert in the Persian Gulf, the huge oil refineries and so on. It was also interesting to see the dynamics of the Pakistani migrant workers who are treated as second-class citizens, except by fanatics who aim to recruit them as suicide bombers. Alas however, I fear that most people will come out thinking that they have seen a cogent polemic against western oil interests in the Middle East, when actually that's the weakest part of the film.

SPOILER WARNING - A key plot line is the US plan to assassinate a young Royal from an oil-rich state who intends to turn his country into a pluralist, secular state where women are educated and allowed to vote. This man is a neo-con's fantasy! Yet he gets killed because the US would rather have his much younger brother in power. How does that make sense? Someone that young could never be relied upon to stay loyal. His opinions could change at any moment. And the killing of the older brother at the end is so 'high-tech' that only the US could have done it. Surely the brother would figure that out? It's just nonsense. The argument is made that the younger one is more open to having US troops on his country's soil. Why would the US care about that when it's already walked out of Saudi Arabia? The only time that the older brother makes a remotely anti-American remark is when he says in public that Middle-East countries should reform at their own pace rather than at one set by Washington. If I were an American politician I would welcome that being said in public by a sincere reformer, as it would make it more likely that he would be accepted by his own people.

By all means see it if you have a few hours to kill. But be prepared to come out completely confused. The film would have made a great deal more sense had it been made about 20 years ago. Shame nobody made it then.

Pushbots
Topic: Poker
I learned a new word yesterday - 'pushbot'. I found it in a thread concerning the use of 'bots' (i.e. robotic players) in Party Poker one-table Sit'n'Gos (SNG). Essentially they appear to be able to make money using a very crude binary 'all-in/not all-in' formula.

There seems to be a lot of anguish about their existence. To me it's amusing that a very basic computer program can be profitable at no-limit hold'em. It undermines any claim that no-limit is the 'man's game'. Obviously it isn't if computers can win at it.

There have been all kinds of reactions ranging from indifference to a conviction that the bots must be banned. If I were concerned that my livelihood were threatened, I would move to games where the blinds increase more slowly and the initial chip allocation were larger. If online sites do wish to remove the threat of bots, then they should adjust their SNG structures accordingly.

Meanwhile, does anyone else think that a 'pushbot' would stand a better than average chance in those televised six-handed comps we see on TV? I'd back one at five-to-one on some of the line-ups I've seen play.

A quick and simple defense of Thatcherism.
Topic: Politics
I caught a few old pop videos from the early 1980s on television the other day and found my mind wandering back to a time when unemployment was high and Britain seemed divided between those who thought Margaret Thatcher was the devil incarnate and those who thought she was the saviour of Britain.

Many still hate her and feel that she did damage to the UK in those years. But I wonder what such critics think of the following crude defense of her actions. Suppose you were one of those who destested her policies. What would you have done differently? I reckon your list would look very familiar to anyone who has lived in Germany and France for the last 20 years -

Subsidy of coal mines - Done in Germany

Maintenance of Trade Union power - Done in Germany and France

Employment protection legislation - Done in France

State shareholdings in major industries - Done in France

Generous welfare payments - Done in Germany

Resist foreign takeovers - Done in France

Aid to depressed regions - Done in Germany (massive transfers to the former east)

And what has been the result of this? Both France and Germany have much higher levels of unemployment than Britain. And both are far more divided societies. Germany is still divided between east and west, despite 16 years of reunification. France has 20 per cent youth unemployment - 40 per cent in the ghettos. The large Muslim and African immigrant population feels utterly cut off from mainstream society. The country has been hit by two separate periods of rioting in the last year.

I don't know why the current Tory leadership is trying so hard to distance itself from Thatcher's legacy. France's disintegration shows that the alternative to Thatcher's short sharp shock was a long agonising decline.