This is a little departure from my normal topics, but I've always found Charles Manson interesting, and here is a fellow who apparently had a very bizarre exchange of letters with the former cult leader. I found it to be an entertaining read of a highly disturbed mind. I'm sure psychiatrists would have a field day with this guy. Let's hope Charlie stays where he is until the end of his days.
= = = = = = = =
To: Billy
From: Charles Manson
Received: December 15, 1998
Find out why the L.A. Times hasn't sent my newspaper —Charles Manson.
P.S. O-yes HI BILLY
Easy easy EASSY
(Manson also attached the mysterious picture of a barn, above.)
I bet you don't remember this —you dont [sic] even know where its [sic] at. HAHA. I got you there.
Charles Manson
Easy BILLY
To: Billy
From: Charles Manson
Received: January 7, 2008
Hay Lo Soul,
Good To Too Two 2 here from you. I thought things got so good for you that you just 4 GOT WHAT you could of remembered or could remember what you don't forgit. Where is your mind—must you watch TV all day to go to night school to be a D.A. JUST to forgit I didn't take your money when I had ALL your credit cards locked up in [continued on second page] my dreams—Rife with Con Va Lution due 2 subjewgashen. My spelling got better—see when you go to school you learn to spell—oh well I'm just playing clown words to say I didn't forgit Hellbilly—Bill we always had good days + I'm glad your gonna be a D.A. Be one who works for justice + not one who wants to win win + and don't care if people didn't do rong—anyway be as good as you are when you git a job + don't let the job make you bad you make the JOB good.
Easy Charles Manson
Letter Marginalia:
You even typing now—Cool. A HILLBILLY that can type—FAR OUT.
I know if you payed what you owe you would be brok brok in like broak ones a panter brock + that they is a crook
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Revealing IDer Subterfuge through the Basics of Blackjack Counting
Over at Uncommon Descent, Sal Cordova wrote a masterpiece of fallacies and flaws concerning the relation of the gambler's ruin and supposed limits of evolution. I dissected that article here. Displeased with my treatment, particularly of his error concerning what it means to have a 1% advantage, Sal responded. However, in doing so, he merely dug his hole of ignorance deeper, and more importantly, gave us a nice example of how IDers attempt to hide their lack of knowledge behind cut-n-pasted jargon.
The mistake I jumped on appears early in Sal's essay, and reveals a fundamental lack of understanding of statistics and gambling:
"If he has a 1% statistical advantage, that means he has a 50.5% chance of winning and a 49.5% chance of losing."
My original response will still suffice:
"No, that isn't what it means. That would be the case only in a game that resembled coin flipping, with a win paying the amount of the wager. However, in most Vegas games, such as blackjack, there are several plays, such as splitting hands, doubling down, or getting a blackjack, which pay far more than the wager. The same can be said for craps, the other game Cordova mentions. A player in such games with a 1% edge can expect to win, on average, 1% of the amount of his wager, per play. He will most certainly NOT expect to win 50.5% of his plays as Cordova suggests."
Sal then went through many wild girations trying to defend this error common to basic statistics classes. At first he claimed that my argument was invalid because I was assuming a single play, but as I explained on PT, that makes no difference. 1 play or 1,000, a 1% edge still does not mean a 50.5% chance of winning.
But his main tactic was to fling as much technical sounding, but irrelevant, verbage and terminology my way. Unfortunately, when you don't understand the subject, doing so will only lead to more errors, and reveal one's ignorance more starkly. His final effort was quite illuminating in this regard. I informed him that I had been a card counter (using an old system known as the Uston Advanced Point Count). To this he retorted:
"Oh, really, then answer my question. While you’re at it, provide count values yielding an advantage of 1% for the other systems such as :
Hi-Low
Silver Fox
Uston APC
It should be pretty easy if you really know what you’re talking about."
Sorry about the irony meters folks, because all Sal has done by asking this question is reveal beyond a shadow of a doubt that he has no idea what he is talking about. To show why, it will be necessary to give a quick Readers' Digest version of blackjack counting systems.
Blackjack is one of the few gambling games where the probability of victory changes one play to the next. This is because 1) used cards are set to the side, and new hands played from the remaining cards in the "shoe", until an arbitrary point is reached and they are all reshuffled, and 2) some cards are more valuable to the player (10's, A's), and others to the dealer (4's, 5's, and 6's). Counting systems place numerical values on the cards (say +3 for 5's, -3 for 10's), and the player keeps a running total of this "count" in his head, adjusting in some systems for decks remaining and/or aces. This count is used to determine bet size, and also when to vary one's play from Basic Strategy (the optimal play given no knowledge of previous cards played). For example, Basic Strategy says to stand with two 10's against a dealers 6. However, if the count rises high enough, the optimal play can be to split the 10's. Counting systems have a grid of all possible player and dealer scenarios, and what counts warrant variation from Basic Strategy, which a successful player must memorize.
One thing that should be obvious at this point is that counting cards in blackjack is no picnic. It takes a great deal of training and dedication to be able to keep the count accurately, make whatever adjustments your system demands, and bet and play accordingly, all without raising the suspicions of the pit bosses or even the other players. What also should be obvious is that counters do not learn all systems. They tend to pick one and stick to it, for that is more than enough challenge. And since each system assigns different values to different cards, and has different adjustments to be made, it is clear that a counter will have little knowledge of the details of a system that he doesn't play. And finally, in many systems it is not necessary to know what % advantage one has in various situations. One simply makes the systems calculations and makes the appropriate bets and plays.
So, all that in tow, let's look at Sal's question again:
"Oh, really, then answer my question. While you’re at it, provide count values yielding an advantage of 1% for the other systems such as :
Hi-Low
Silver Fox
Uston APC
It should be pretty easy if you really know what you’re talking about."
It should be clear now that Sal is talking out of his hat. Never mind the complete irrelevancy of his questions to the matter at hand: whether an edge of 1% implies a winning percentage of 50.5%. Never mind that he doesn't even seem to know that Uston APC is the system I played (he lists it under "other systems"). No one knowledgeable about counting would ask such a question, nor would likely have the answer, since no one would know all three systems he lists. It also is a completely irrelevant question to the Uston APC system I played, which did not require this knowledge. And as an added bonus, Sal's question doesn't even make sense, because the % advantage for a player with a given count in the Uston APC system is not constant, but instead varies by remaining decks. From table 9-2 of Ken Uston's "Million Dollar Blackjack", page 128 of my 1981 copy:
PLAYER EDGE AT VARIOUS TRUE COUNTS
USTON ADVANCED POINT COUNT
UPC True count of +3:
1 deck remaining: +1.0%
2 decks remaining: +0.7%
3 decks remaining: +0.6%
the values lay out in similar declining pattern for other counts and decks remaining.
So we see here clearly that Sal has no idea what he is talking about, and is simply cutting and pasting impressive-looking technical information in an attempt to hide his ignorance. No one who understands card counting would have asked this question.
This is worth being on the lookout for when listening to IDer/creationist arguments. If it seems impossible to grasp their line of argument, don't blame yourself. It is likely they are doing what Sal did above.
The mistake I jumped on appears early in Sal's essay, and reveals a fundamental lack of understanding of statistics and gambling:
"If he has a 1% statistical advantage, that means he has a 50.5% chance of winning and a 49.5% chance of losing."
My original response will still suffice:
"No, that isn't what it means. That would be the case only in a game that resembled coin flipping, with a win paying the amount of the wager. However, in most Vegas games, such as blackjack, there are several plays, such as splitting hands, doubling down, or getting a blackjack, which pay far more than the wager. The same can be said for craps, the other game Cordova mentions. A player in such games with a 1% edge can expect to win, on average, 1% of the amount of his wager, per play. He will most certainly NOT expect to win 50.5% of his plays as Cordova suggests."
Sal then went through many wild girations trying to defend this error common to basic statistics classes. At first he claimed that my argument was invalid because I was assuming a single play, but as I explained on PT, that makes no difference. 1 play or 1,000, a 1% edge still does not mean a 50.5% chance of winning.
But his main tactic was to fling as much technical sounding, but irrelevant, verbage and terminology my way. Unfortunately, when you don't understand the subject, doing so will only lead to more errors, and reveal one's ignorance more starkly. His final effort was quite illuminating in this regard. I informed him that I had been a card counter (using an old system known as the Uston Advanced Point Count). To this he retorted:
"Oh, really, then answer my question. While you’re at it, provide count values yielding an advantage of 1% for the other systems such as :
Hi-Low
Silver Fox
Uston APC
It should be pretty easy if you really know what you’re talking about."
Sorry about the irony meters folks, because all Sal has done by asking this question is reveal beyond a shadow of a doubt that he has no idea what he is talking about. To show why, it will be necessary to give a quick Readers' Digest version of blackjack counting systems.
Blackjack is one of the few gambling games where the probability of victory changes one play to the next. This is because 1) used cards are set to the side, and new hands played from the remaining cards in the "shoe", until an arbitrary point is reached and they are all reshuffled, and 2) some cards are more valuable to the player (10's, A's), and others to the dealer (4's, 5's, and 6's). Counting systems place numerical values on the cards (say +3 for 5's, -3 for 10's), and the player keeps a running total of this "count" in his head, adjusting in some systems for decks remaining and/or aces. This count is used to determine bet size, and also when to vary one's play from Basic Strategy (the optimal play given no knowledge of previous cards played). For example, Basic Strategy says to stand with two 10's against a dealers 6. However, if the count rises high enough, the optimal play can be to split the 10's. Counting systems have a grid of all possible player and dealer scenarios, and what counts warrant variation from Basic Strategy, which a successful player must memorize.
One thing that should be obvious at this point is that counting cards in blackjack is no picnic. It takes a great deal of training and dedication to be able to keep the count accurately, make whatever adjustments your system demands, and bet and play accordingly, all without raising the suspicions of the pit bosses or even the other players. What also should be obvious is that counters do not learn all systems. They tend to pick one and stick to it, for that is more than enough challenge. And since each system assigns different values to different cards, and has different adjustments to be made, it is clear that a counter will have little knowledge of the details of a system that he doesn't play. And finally, in many systems it is not necessary to know what % advantage one has in various situations. One simply makes the systems calculations and makes the appropriate bets and plays.
So, all that in tow, let's look at Sal's question again:
"Oh, really, then answer my question. While you’re at it, provide count values yielding an advantage of 1% for the other systems such as :
Hi-Low
Silver Fox
Uston APC
It should be pretty easy if you really know what you’re talking about."
It should be clear now that Sal is talking out of his hat. Never mind the complete irrelevancy of his questions to the matter at hand: whether an edge of 1% implies a winning percentage of 50.5%. Never mind that he doesn't even seem to know that Uston APC is the system I played (he lists it under "other systems"). No one knowledgeable about counting would ask such a question, nor would likely have the answer, since no one would know all three systems he lists. It also is a completely irrelevant question to the Uston APC system I played, which did not require this knowledge. And as an added bonus, Sal's question doesn't even make sense, because the % advantage for a player with a given count in the Uston APC system is not constant, but instead varies by remaining decks. From table 9-2 of Ken Uston's "Million Dollar Blackjack", page 128 of my 1981 copy:
PLAYER EDGE AT VARIOUS TRUE COUNTS
USTON ADVANCED POINT COUNT
UPC True count of +3:
1 deck remaining: +1.0%
2 decks remaining: +0.7%
3 decks remaining: +0.6%
the values lay out in similar declining pattern for other counts and decks remaining.
So we see here clearly that Sal has no idea what he is talking about, and is simply cutting and pasting impressive-looking technical information in an attempt to hide his ignorance. No one who understands card counting would have asked this question.
This is worth being on the lookout for when listening to IDer/creationist arguments. If it seems impossible to grasp their line of argument, don't blame yourself. It is likely they are doing what Sal did above.
Einstein on Religion: Putting the Nonsense to Rest
In case you missed the news, this letter of Einstein's finally puts to rest the notion that he was in any way a traditional believer in gods. On the Bible:
"The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this."
That pretty much squares with my opinion as well. On the Jews being the chosen people:
"For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them."
Keep these in mind the next time some believer tries to claim Einstein as one of his own.
"The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this."
That pretty much squares with my opinion as well. On the Jews being the chosen people:
"For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them."
Keep these in mind the next time some believer tries to claim Einstein as one of his own.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
The Worst Misrepresentation of the Global Warming Science Ever
Just when you thought Bill Dembski's little band of denialist sycophants could't sink any lower, check out this little piece of other-worldly ignorance:
"Before spending trillions of dollars trying to control climate change, shouldn’t we get a second opinion on both the science and policy options?"
A second opinion? SECOND? So the thousands of articles in the peer-reviewed literature all count as ONE opinion? There's "fair and balanced" for you: millions of scientists on this side, one crank on the other.
Moron.
"Before spending trillions of dollars trying to control climate change, shouldn’t we get a second opinion on both the science and policy options?"
A second opinion? SECOND? So the thousands of articles in the peer-reviewed literature all count as ONE opinion? There's "fair and balanced" for you: millions of scientists on this side, one crank on the other.
Moron.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Youth Voters Ignorant? More Speculation Paraded as Evidence
Suzanne Fields treats us to yet another case of Republicans substituting speculation for facts.
Obama's appeal is to the educated voters, not the ignorant ones (Hillary got those). And it isn't young Obama voters getting on the air and revealing that they don't know their history, such as what Neville Chamberlain did, or what the Cuban missile crisis was about. No, those were Republicans.
Obama's appeal is to the educated voters, not the ignorant ones (Hillary got those). And it isn't young Obama voters getting on the air and revealing that they don't know their history, such as what Neville Chamberlain did, or what the Cuban missile crisis was about. No, those were Republicans.
Monday, May 26, 2008
Great Illusions
For a fun look at what a great psychological understanding can produce, check out the amazing illusions here.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
The Cdesign Proponentists Video
Every school board, and every board of education, should see this video before falling for the latest creationist scam. It reveals the smoking gun that Inteligent Design is creationism, just as "academic freedom", and whatever new name they come up for it in the future. A pig with a hat on it is still a pig, and smells just as bad.
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