Saturday Morning Big Lebowski Roundup

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my God ! Sienna Miller and Steve Buscemi?!

Trivia:
-Red Hot Chili Peppers’ bassist Flea is one of the nihilists.

Flea, at right

John Goodman is doing voice work in The Bee Movie.

DONNY
Those are good burgers, Walter.

WALTER
Shut the fuck up, Donny.

Ohio State quarterback Troy Smith has a favorite burger in Arizona and some new best friends on the West Coast after he publicly professed that love Wednesday.

Asked about his familiarity with the Phoenix area on his fourth bowl trip here in the last five years, the Heisman Trophy winner launched into a passionate description of his appreciation of In-N-Out Burger, a chain of 203 fast-food restaurants located only in Arizona, Nevada and primarily California.

“For the folks back in Ohio, they need to understand first and foremost, it is a fresh burger,” Smith said, breaking down the burger like he breaks down a defense. “The lettuce and tomatoes are extremely fresh. And they toast the buns. That’s huge. That’s key. They use a special kind of sauce, too. The sandwich is incredible after a long night.”
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That’s my homework, Walter !

Consumer Reports: McDonalds coffee better than Starbucks

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Starbucks may be the world’s largest coffee shop chain in the world, but what they serve isn’t as good as what McDonald’s brews, Consumer Reports says.
In the March issue, the magazine called the fast food giant’s Premium Roast “cheapest and best.” The coffee also beat out new offerings from Burger King and Dunkin’ Donuts.

he magazine reported that McDonald’s was “decent and moderately strong. Although it lacked the subtle top notes needed to make it rise and shine, it had no flaws.”

As for Starbucks, the magazine called it “strong, but burnt and bitter enough to make your eyes water instead of open.”

plus, you can get fries…………..

Super Bowl odds, Wisdom of Crowds, and TradeSports

Many of you have read The Wisdom of Crowds, published in 2004. In the first place, the book is completely misnamed. But more about that later.

Let me sum up the books message like this: a variety of people who have some bits of knowledge, operating independently, can, in the aggregate, come up with exceedingly accurate assessments of a variety of problems.

The outcome of the Super Bowl is one of these kinds of problems. Most of us are somewhat familiar with “the odds.” In football, one team is usually favored by a certain number of points. For the Super Bowl, the Indianapolis  Colts are at present favored over the Chicago Bears by 7 points. The oddsmakers are basically reflecting how the public (the semi-experts) is betting ie most of the public favors the Colts, but if they have to give up 7 points, then the betting is about evenly divided. In general, if the team you chose wins, after adjusting the score by 7 points, you win a 100% return.

Trade Sports is a site that aggregates the wisdom of these sorts of semi-expert people, on a variety of subjects that might be amenable to “wagering.” They express the odds a little differently; they sell and buy options. When the event is over, the options expire, and they are either worth 100 or nothing, depending on whether the option was on the winning team. At present, options on the Colts are worth 68. If you buy them, and the Colts win, you get back 100, for a gain of 32. If they lose, you get nothing back. If you sell options, for 68, and the Colts lose, you net 68. But if they win, you have to buy the options for 100, for a net loss of 32.

So which is the better bet: the Las Vegas odds of 7 points, or the TradeSports options?

Here’s my thinking: anything to get away from those damn points. Beating the point spreads on a consistent basis is almost impossible. I don’t know the math but it seems to me that the semi-experts here are not making a quantitative assessment. They are, rather, expressing how strongly they hold their opinions. I think this is more likely to be in error than the margin of victory projection, as expressed in the odds.

Bottom line:

Sell the Colts options at TradeSports.

Good luck !!

oh, yes….the book is misnamed, because crowds of people do not express independent opinions, and thus are prone to make huge errors.

Now that wolves have recovered, plans are to kill most of them.

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On Monday, federal officials announced a plan to delist the gray wolf populations in the Rocky Mountain region, saying that the northwest corner of Wyoming could be left behind unless state officials draw up a viable wolf management plan. Members of the Wyoming Legislature, meanwhile, scrambled to pass bills that call for aggressive killing of wolves in the state.

The plan would remove Endangered Species Act protection for more than 5,000 wolves in the lower 48 states, placing management of the animals under state control. Wyoming’s wolf plan and law currently don’t satisfy the federal government’s insistence that measures be taken to ensure survival of the species around Yellowstone National Park.

End of discussion

Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance executive director Franz Camenzind said delisting all but the northwest corner of Wyoming hurts efforts to protect the wolf.

“I don’t like it, because that really ends the discussion about trophy game and predator status,” he said. “It ends the discussion as to where that line should be, and it seems like it’s a major acquiescence for people who want to kill wolves and manage them at a minimum number.”

Wyoming and Idaho have made it clear that they intend to kill a large portion of the recovered wolf population, Camenzind said. Montana’s wolf management plan is “barely acceptable,” he said.

This is pathetic. There is no evidence that wolves are affecting big game populations. The occasional depredation can be compensated. Instead of the beauty of wolves in the wild, we are gonna get aerial hunting, poisoning, year round kill on sight, and in five years we’ll be back to where we started.