Naked Paul Toast’s Insights

Oops

We have a football pool at work. Costs $20, 11 people are in it. At the end of the season first place gets 70%($154), second place gets 20%($44), third place gets 10%($22).

It’s done really well. All online. You enter your picks via a web page, When the games are over, login to see how many you got right and where you are in the standings. The guy running it doesn’t take any vig., all the money goes back out in prizes. He just loves doing it.

Being so close to the beginning of the season everyone is still clumped together. I’m in third place with a record of 31 correct picks and 16 incorrect picks. Picking is straight up, no spreads, no confidence points. Just pick the winner.

My picks for this week are:
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My brother-in-law, let’s call him BIL, has an iPhone 3G as well. He loves it.

A couple weeks ago, he, his wife and kids were coming home from a week-end away. They stopped off at a public conservation area for a break and something to eat.

BIL had let one of his daughters use his new iPhone. Some time had gone by, his daughter was nowhere to be found, BIL started to wonder where she was at.

He was then approached by his wife and daughter, they both had rather sullen looks.

“Something’s wrong.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Uhhhhh.”
“What’s wrong?”
[silence]
“WHAT”S WRONG?!”

“Well, when I was going to the outhouse, your iPhone fell out of my pocket.”
“Where is it?”
“It, kinda fell into the hole”
“WHAT!”
[more silence - but a much different kind of silence]
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Started my monthly poker game Friday. We don’t play over the summer. I’ve said this before, none of this group play serious poker, it’s a social thing. The host provides the place, the booze and the food. The stakes are quarters. The variance ranges from losing $30.00 to winning $30.00, though occasionally some manage to find themselves outside of these ranges. The record winning night was set by me a couple years ago, up $72.00.

Traditionally, we all count our change at the beginning, count it at the end, and then compare win/loss. Though we always have a pretty good idea idea who is up and who is down. After five hours, I finished up $0.25. That’s a whopping win rate of 5 cents an hour.

Spent Saturday golfing with my brother-in-law, while Mrs. NakedPaulToast and her sister-in-law went to Canada’s Wonderland. I won two skins. That’s a whopping win rate of 40 cents an hour.

We then all met up for a barbecue and beer .

Perhaps if my parents had focused more on my Arithetic as a youth, I wouldn’t be such a degenerate gambler.

Mrs. NakedPaulToast is taking me to The Keg for my birthday. My favorite steakhouse.

I’m going to get the biggest fattest steak in the place, with a big ol’ honk’n baked potato loaded with crap that will send my cholesterol through the roof, and a Keg Size Bloody Caesar.

Happy birthday to me,
Happy birthday to me……..

In the YoYoGames Competition 4 Glog entry, Sandy Duncan, YYGs CEO, responded:

Comp03 results should be out soon. Can’t give an exact date as MarkO is away till next week and he won’t let us do anything unless he has a vote !! Problem we’re facing is there are a LOT more good games submitted than in previous competitions. Normally by now we would have a shortlist of 10. At the moment it’s still close to 30 !

I expect the following three entries to be shortlisted. At worst make honourable mention in the Competition 3 winner announcements, and probably take home some or all of the prize money.

Drop in the Bucket by KC LC.
Lost Snowmen by RedSystem.
Byteality Tower Defence by Erik Leppen.

What are my predictions based on?
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Earlier, I wrote about Conspiracy theorists and the Downraters. Today we’re going to look at a conspiracy theorist and demonstrate that his claims are manufactured, and could not have happened as he alleged it happened.

[EDIT] Links to GMC topic and YoYogames page intentionally removed, see comment for explanation.

The topic started out as a rant about how the game has been on the top page and then because of a downrater dropped into oblivion. The thing is, it absolutely could not have happened like he said it happened. It’s not feasible mathematically, it’s not feasible time wise, and it’s not feasible that a game that has gotten absolutely zero attention, suddenly got huge negative attention, and then all of a sudden get so much positive attention.

It just doesn’t work.

But I just watched it get continually downrated from a 4.0 to a 3.7 (about 20+ votes) within a matter of seconds

The topic states that he just happened to be on YoYoGames and just happened to witness a downrater downrate his game in a matter of seconds. He said it happened 20+ times, later in the topic claimed 25 to 30 times.
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Conspiracy theories (and theorists), the world is absolutely full of them.

JFK assassination, 9/11, moon landing hoax, are probably the most notorious modern day conspiracy theories. They have a lot in common, like most conspiracy theories, they fail Occam’s Razor, they’re not falsifiable, they’re not support by industry experts, they defy logic, they demand too many people stay silent.

They just don’t make sense.
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I only expect programmers to “get” this one. It’s one of the cleverest vanity plates, I’ve seen.

Jack Szostak created …

Biologists on the Verge of Creating New Form of Life

A Harvard team of biologists and chemists have created protocells from fatty molecules. These protocells meet almost all criteria for life, the exception being they don’t replicate completely on their own. They still need a little nudge.

One of the biggest arguments against evolution made by Fundies is “Life must have been created”. Of course evidence is never presented. Positions with out evidence, simply stating something “must have…”, are always a poor arguments. What’s even worse is abiogenesis, has absolutely nothing to do with the mounds of evidence supporting evolution.

But since creationists and ID proponents still insist that abiogenesis could not have happened, and therefore evolution could not have happened. This development brings us one step closer to understanding the natural formation of life.