In a discussion on a study about what possessions really made people happy, iainuki said: What is it with houses? I don't understand the psychology, I don't think, or the motivation. I don't entirely understand it myself, but I am deeply effected by it. One of the stories about me I like to tell is when Nancy and I were buying this house it stressed me out so much I temporarily dislocated...

The subject of what it means to be an adult--or rather, how you decide whether or not someone else is one--has been coming up a lot lately. Last week in a locked post, a friend said that one of her benchmarks for adulthood was the ability to deal with the realities of bodily functions--specifically, "if you are highly interested in portions of someone's anatomy, that you'd better be able to cope with...

The 1500 NL started well. First hand, I open late with KJ, button calls. The flop is ATx, I continuation bet, he calls. Turn is an A, check, check, river is a Q, ding. I bet just under half the pot and he calls. Then I get it in marginally and win: tightish player raises from the field to 300 (50-100 blinds), I reraise from the sb with AK to 1000, he calls. The flop is QTx, and I bet his last 2600...

Got in today, checked in, then tried to persuade the Bellagio to give me the $40k I wired to them. It took 20 minutes worth of paperwork, and then the cage had someone from the poker room escort me over to make sure I sat in a game with the money, since they don't want me to take it out as cash and take it somewhere else. Which I promptly did after playing for a while in a 10-20 game (won a little...

I played a 9 hour session at LC yesterday ( patrissimo was there, recovering from surgery). At allknight 's suggestion, I recorded every hand I played for the session. That turns out to be a huge pain in the ass, so I'm unlikely to do this for the rest of eternity, but it was an interesting exercise. Some stats: I played 85 hands in 9 hours, where played means voluntarily putting money...

.....you might be right. Running shoes cause injuries and don't improve performance . On the government side, it's breaking my brain a little that $30,000,000 was spent to prosecute a president for lying about his sex life while it's quite possible that another president doesn't have to worry about authorizing torture and starting a war for no good reason. Link thanks to patrissimo . Idea...

This year, I did my taxes myself, by hand, as is my usual practice (except when I have something particularly interesting happen that might have unknown-to-me tax benefits). Last year, I gave up trying to figure out how to file electronically (since I wasn't using a third-party piece of tax-calculation software, it wasn't just "click here to file"). This year, I did it all pencil-and-paper again,...

A fascinating discussion about failure, via patrissimo : http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/misc/2005_Stuck_In_The_Middle_With_Bruce.html There's a lot of wisdom there.

Townhall.com: Dance the Night Away ... The LRC Blog: Girl Arrested for Celebrating Thomas Jefferson's Birthday Hit & Tally: Update on the Jefferson Memorial Arrest The Fomenter: Jefferson Memorial Update The Fencesitter Institute: Thomas Jefferson Fan Arrested for Dancing at His Memorial patri Friedman: Thomas Jefferson's birthday celebration results in arrest ...

"Mark to bubble accounting" from patrissimo . This is in contrast to Mark to market accounting, in which assets are valued according to what you can really sell them for. There's also "mark to model" accounting (a risk for fraud) in which you value assets according to an idea of what you can sell them for. "Journalistic capture"-- when an institution gets control of the media which is supposed...