Naples
 

So you don't want me to have breakfast with b_n_b? The two hour drive would save me a bunch of layover time for a little weekend trip. I'm generally opposed to dealing with layovers for weekend trips.

And, breakfast with b_n_b! (ya know, if she would be willing to meet me and stuff. I'll get gwnc and dtb to send my references over to her stat.)


ETA how can a two hour drive be more boring than driving all of I-10? This does not compute for me.

Naples
 

If you've not been to Florida the cross state drive is something you'd like. Especially true if you have time to stop at tacky tourist sites. Airboat ride in the"glades?" C'mon now, that'd be fun.

I'd rather spend a few hours on those roads than a few hours in Dallas airport.

Naples
 

Naples is about 110 miles from my house. And probably less than 150 miles from Fort Lauderdale airport. It's a straight shot across the panhandle on Alligator Alley, which is probably one of the boringest drives in America, although you can speed pretty much as much as you want and you may see alligators sunning themselves on the side of the road. I've made the drive 3 times myself... once to take the bar exam in Tampa (oh, the hell!) and twice for Red Sox Spring Training. It's in the neighborhood of two hours to Naples.

And yes, dear, I'd love to have breakfast with you. Just let me know when you are coming.

Naples
 

If you aren't afraid of horses, you can skip the airboat ride and I'll take you out to the Everglades on horseback. Now that's something else. Although best done this time of year once the sun's gone down...

Apropos of Nothing....
 

"Red Eye" is fun, entertaining summer fare.

"Kung Fu Hustle" is a must for your Netlfix lists

"Million Dollar Baby" has to be the most fucking depressing movie I've seen since 21 Grams. Ugh.

Where's the obligatory bad joke about being careful skating on the Rideau canal if Heatly's behind the wheel . . .

Apropos of Nothing....
 

I believe that Four Brothers (yes, another one on which I worked) was the movie that led the Sports Guy to write, "is there any movie released today that DOESN'T get two thumbs up from Ebert and Roeper?"

Of course, I have no proof of that. But I still say the Bad News Bears remake is funny.

Things I'm hearing about Aeon . . . not so good. It was originally going to be an August/September type release, now I think it's November. So y'all know what that means.

Apropos of Nothing....
 

I believe they hated the Dukes of Hazzard. And I think Deuce Bigalow.

While we're all opining on child birth,
 

Twenty minutes of pondering and still nothing to add. I think I may need before & after shots of RP's hoo-ha to formulate an opinion.

FUPA
 

Oops. Blink and you'll miss it.

FUPA
 

And Malcolm Gladwell wept.

One of Wikipedia's bases for sudden deletion is "patent nonsense." I'm going to use that in a brief. I almost used "Poppycock" as a one-word sentence, but I think I pussed out and deleted it in favor of "Not so."

Naples
 

Canoeing the Ten Thousand Islands is pretty effing cool, too.

FUPA
 

Have you read Blink? At first, I thought, “This is brilliant.” But after many hours of listening (had it on cd for long car ride), I began to realize all he’s saying is that our first impressions are usually right.

But he does have one really cool point. Most of us can surmise the proper strategic response in a case within about 3 or 4 minutes. Sometimes, you just know which way the judge is going to go. But you can’t explain why to some douchebag partner who demands you list all the myriad bases your brain processed nearly instantaneously to reach the conclusion it did. So you fumble and feel foolish for being right but not being able to explain why to some asshole who thinks no solution can be achieved without some rigorous application of formula, the steps of which can be explained in detail. I like Gladwell’s conclusion that when such simpletons demand an explanation for the reason for your strategy decision, you should say “Isn’t it obvious?”

Naples
 

Get pre-approved for a mortgage before you go to Naples. Buy a home - any home - when you land. On your way back out, sell it. If you’re unlucky, you’ll make seven or eight times the cost of the trip.

Naples
 

She's got bad credit. She'd never be pre-approved. Unless....maybe you could co-sign?

FUPA
 

Fantastic. Previously, my favorite review of Blink was the guy who said his first instinct was that the book was trite, and that reading it proved that right. But this is even better. Extra points for being unintentional, I think.

FUPA
 

No. However, I was struck by the irony of his writing a front-cover blurb for Steven Leavitt's book --- a book whose primary point is that the conventional wisdom is wrong and this can be proven only by performing complicated regression analysis on other economists' raw data. Maybe "Blink" is a nickname for a Cray supercomputer somewhere in Chicago.

FUPA
 

Unintentional, or subconsciously intentional? I don’t really know any more. Gladwell’s turned my world inside out.

Naples
 

Sounds tiring.

TM

Another trash-related petty annoyance
 

Why the FUCK can't the people who empty the trash and recycling bins put the damned things back where they came from, rather than at the edge of the desk, out of arm's reach and in a spot where anything that falls off the desk will land in the garbage? Is this an industry standard -- the default position for office trash receptacles?

I mean, I'm nice, I don't leave onion-and-sauce-laden sandwich wrappings or half-empty cups of liquid in the trash so that they have to change the plastic liners. All I'm asking is that if they are going to enter my office to do their jobs, they respect my space enough to put things back where they got them from. Oh, and it would also be helpful, when an errant piece of paper strays from the path between my bin and theirs, that they pick it up, rather than leave it on the floor.

Come on people, give the penguin a break. It's not that easy to bend over and pick up anything, no matter how light.

FUPA
 

My first reaction to Gladwell and Leavitt was “huh, two guys trying to prove their points by engaging in exactly the endeavors they criticize.” But that’s a dishonest dismissal. Gladwell acknowledges the contradiction by saying the book is meant to entertain, and that, because people are so accustomed to having the reasons behind any decision vetted from every conceivable angle and spoon fed to them, he needs to cite tons of examples to prove his point. I haven’t read all of Freakonomics, but from what I have, I don’t think Leavitt’s saying “statistical studies are generally bullshit.” Isn’t he saying most statistical studies are bullshit because they’re no done completely enough or they’re manuevered to reflect the bias of the group paying for the study?

FUPA
 

I think that's one underlying implication of Leavitt's book, although he'd just as readily attribute the errors to ignorance. His basic thesis is that people mistake correlation for causation - either willfully to promote their own agenda or simply out of ignorance.

While I agree with the underlying premise, he then sprinkles the book with countless examples where he does exactly what he's being critical of: correlation instead of causation, or using irrelevant measures (such as time vs. distance in measuring airflight - although I kind of think that one may be an elaborate joke on his part).

I feel your pain
 

Yes, apparently.

FUPA
 

Do we really need a book to tell us that statistics lie? Oh, right, we probably do.

I'm going to finish Collapse tonight and I don't have a replacement book quite on tap. I ordered The World Is Flat from amazon and it hasn't arrived yet. Oh, wait, I do have that book about the MIT guys who broke Vegas. Problem solved.

By the way, for all you poker fans out there, two of my girlfriends and I will be playing in the WPT Legends of Poker Ladies' Night tournament at The Bicycle Club next Wednesday night. Winner of the tournament plays on the Ladies' Night WPT "final table" with the famous people. I'll let you know if you need to watch that. Maybe my friend will get her 4K's again.

New IM
 

For those of you with vicious IT Nazis keeping you from the wonders of IM, go here: http://www.google.com/talk/. I don't think they've caught up with this one yet.

TM

New IM
 

Holy shit! It worked! It even installed onto my desktop. Whoa.

Uh, if you know my yahoo IM name, the gmail name is remarkably similar.

New IM
 

On this subject, I recently downloaded the new Yahoo Messenger with voice, and have had the opportunity to actually talk to someone using Messenger. It's pretty cool. Quality is better than cell phones, maybe sounds a little more tinny than a land line, and I would recommend each participant in the conversation wear headphones to avoid the strange sensation of hearing yourself talk on the other end. Other than that, I recommend.

New IM
 

It appears to have worked for me also. My gmail name is not my yahoo name. PM me if you want to know it.

So this works with all other IM systems or only with other gmail people?

An open letter
 

Dear Weather Gods,

I am tired of hurricanes. Please take Tropical Storm Katrina and stick her up your collective asses.

My warmest regards,

Bn'B

An open letter
 

How are things looking for Naples in October? Did I mention this trip is to celebrate the upcoming wedding of my weather-challenged friend? Like week-long-trip-to-Virgin-Islands-changed-into-5-days-stuck-in-a-hotel-by-the-Miami-airport-during-hurricane-conditions sort of challenged.

Is hurricane season over by then?

An open letter
 

No. It ends the end of November. And if you being another hurricane with you, I will kick your ass.

An open letter
 

it wouldn't be me. it would be her fault. but I'll kick her ass for you if I fly across the country into a hurricane.

Waste of resources
 

This is borderline fucking ridiculous. I mean what if he told her - go ahead, stay fat and die?? If he said you should lose weight, because you are obese and it will affect your health - that's one thing. I guess my opinion would be different if he said lose some weight fatty, or die.

Doctor in trouble for calling patient obese
N.H. woman filed complaint; state attorney general asked to investigate.

ROCHESTER, N.H. - As doctors warn more patients that they should lose weight, the advice has backfired on one doctor with a woman filing a complaint with the state saying he was hurtful, not helpful.

Dr. Terry Bennett says he tells obese patients their weight is bad for their health and their love lives, but the lecture drove one patient to complain to the state.

“I told a fat woman she was obese,” Bennett says. “I tried to get her attention. I told her, 'You need to get on a program, join a group of like-minded people and peel off the weight that is going to kill you.'"

He says he wrote a letter of apology to the woman when he found out she was offended.

Her complaint, filed about a year ago, was initially investigated by a panel of the New Hampshire Board of Medicine, which recommended that Bennett be sent a confidential letter of concern. The board rejected the suggestion in December and asked the attorney general’s office to investigate.

Bennett rejected that office’s proposal that he attend a medical education course and acknowledge that he made a mistake.

“Physicians have to be professional with patients and remember everyone is an individual. You should not be inflammatory or degrading to anyone,” said board member Kevin Costin.

Other overweight patients have come to Bennett’s defense.

“What really makes me angry is he told the truth,” Mindy Haney told WMUR-TV on Tuesday. “How can you punish somebody for that?”

Haney said Bennett has helped her lose more than 150 pounds, but acknowledged that the initially didn’t want to listen.

“I have been in this lady’s shoes. I’ve been angry and left his practice. I mean, in-my-car-taking-off angry,” Haney said. “But once you think about it, you’re angry at yourself, not Doctor Bennett. He’s the messenger. He’s telling you what you already know.”

lose some weight fatty

Waste of resources
 

Jesus, how can any plastic surgeon ever do a consult?

"So do I need work doc?"

"Well, yes and no. You're what we call 'differently attractive.' You share this condition with some very fine company - Rick Ocasek, Ron Jeremy, Eleanor Roosevelt and half the early American Idol winners.”

“So what, if anything, should I have done first.”

“I’d like to start by removing most of the area between your mandibular joint and your forehead...”

FUPA
 

Tying these thoughts together, I took Andy Bloch (Professional poker player, a MIT blackjack team member, and HLS graduate) for a nice pot playing online this week. Take that sucker!

Waste of resources
 

It's not borderline. And the woman isn't the only ridiculous party. The board should have nipped this complaint in the bud rather than recommended a referral to the AG. They shouldn't even have sent the bullshit letter of concern, but that would at least have covered their pansy asses.

Waste of resources
 

Well, I added the borderline when I decided that if he called her fatty then maybe, maybe she has a claim. Otherwise, I'd think the AG's office would have more important stuff to do.

Waste of resources
 

In that case, she might have a point, but not a claim, and her point would be addressed by his letter of apology.

I should file a complaint against my OB for telling me that I'm of advanced maternal age. That bitch. How dare she?

Waste of resources
 

Hi everyone! This is Ty posting from 15 years in the future. Bill Gates is a genius!

Anyway, this whole fatty rights thing really takes off in about 5 years so that fat becomes acceptable, then actually preferred. Little Fringe Benefit was the star of breasticle day 7, and she and Thurgreed actually married for awhile in '13.

RP, after the baby was born, you worked hard to get back to your original weight but by then it was seen as too skinny. You were alone for a few years until you and Paigow realized you both had more in common than different. You hook up in 2009, and are married in a civil ceremony in Canada the next year.

More later!

Waste of resources
 

Let me get this striaght. It's okay for you to call people incoherent drunk imbeciles, just because it makes you feel good, but a doctor can't tell an obese patient she's obese.

Really makes sense.