Taxes Explained by Beer

November 19, 2008

 

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.

The fifth would pay $1.

The sixth would pay $3.

The seventh would pay $7.

The eighth would pay $12.

The ninth would pay $18.

The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59. 

So, that’s what they decided to do.

The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. ‘Since you are all such good customers,’ he said, ‘I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20.’ Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.

The ten men still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes.

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The Bills…are cursed.

November 18, 2008

Thanks for sharing rufo.


Spoiler Alert – Heads up at Main Event

November 10, 2008

The two most aggressive players at the final table have made it to the final two.  If you don’t want to know who they are stop reading now.

 

Peter Eastgate and Ivan Demidov make the historic heads up battle interesting to watch from a technical standpoint.  Danes vs Russia.  80 mil in chips v. 60 mil in chips.  Lots of play, and two players that you can watch to actually learn a thing or two from.  I would have liked to see Chino make it heads up, because he really seems to have a solid game, but these two guys will battle it out for sure.

Ivan Demidov was all in vs. Chino before the final table with 9’s v 10’s – and four flushed it ftw.  But he seems to have the respect of the ‘name pros’ and why not – he made the final table of the WSOPE main event as well.  Beast mode!  He pushes his stack around, and definitely plays to win.  

Eastgate – when 10 handed, opens AK, gets flatted by late position, then Marquis goes bonkers and ships it with AQ – Eastgate made a disciplined lay down preflop – made the final 9, and played solid aggressive poker, while winning most flips, and making huge hands to knock people out.  Running good is fun.

I hope Eastgate wins, as it would make him the youngest main event winner, and thereby taking that claim away from Hellmuth.  GLGLGLGL.


Change [dot] Gov

November 10, 2008

Pres-elec Barack has a shiny new website up an running called change.gov.

The initial purpose is to allow for transparency and discussion while he builds a cabinet team capable of cleaning up the mess in government accrued over the last few years.

 

Speculators say the days of fireside chats with the president on saturday mornings over the radio in the living room are over.  It’s interesting to have a president who is very tech savvy, ready to change the way we communicate, and has changed the way campaigns communicate/raise money.

He ran the most successful campaign in history.  Conspiracy theorists can argue that some of the money raised on the website was through anonymous ‘visa type gift cards’ – campaign finance laws state that you do not have to refuse any money, but should give unidentified (or over contributed individual funds) back to the person donating.  In the case of random gift card donations, there is no one to trace the funds back to. So what – water under the bridge imho.  

The point is – you can leverage the internet regardless of you business, service, idea – so anything you create that is worth talking about, can be talked about with the greatest of ease and laziness.  Just perfect for the ADD generation.  The trick is to actually be creating something worth talking about.  For more resources on how to do that, read anything Seth Godin writes.

The Change dot Gov site could really be a cool public forum, in which the voice of the people – aka true democracy – is actually disseminated, organized, measured, and most importantly, listened to.  Someone should figure out how to catalogue all the comments/opinions, because anyone familiar with open forums knows the majority of the posts are junk – but great ideas tend to rise to the top.

Exciting times, indeed.  

In the words of Abraham Lincoln:

…That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.


Event #13, HO, $550 buyin – Lin takes it Down

November 3, 2008

Will finally decided to win something, and took down event #13 during the Caesar’s Poker Classic, a $550 buyin pot limit holdem and pot limit omahi hi event that took place on 10/24/08.

CONGRATS WILL!


Gambling Game – Fake money. Real Stocks.

November 3, 2008

Pretty fun game called Inspectd.com that lets you buy/sell/skip stocks by looking at an overall trending of data.  I’m sure it was just beginners luck but I turned $100k into $263k in 18 trades.  Weeeeee.

Another point of contention would be all these stocks are ‘historical’ data, meaning before this insanity that is the unstable current market conditions of 2008.  Under more temperate times, one could assume some consistencies in the market.  Now everyone is waiting for Paulson to rescue them.

I digress.  Fun game.  Somewhat addicting.

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