Woman convinced to hold down toilet handle as conman robs her

A 91-year-old Jersey City woman was conned by a burglar pretending to be a utility company employee. He told her that there was a water emergency and that if she didn't hold down the flusher on her toilet, the house would explode. Meanwhile, he stole almost $4000 in cash from her apartment. From The Jersey Journal:
The man first opened and shut a faucet in the kitchen and then went into the victim's bathroom where he flushed the toilet, reports said.

The man then instructed the victim to "hold down the flush handle or else the house will explode," reports said...

But after about two minutes, the victim told police "I didn't care if the house exploded" and walked into her living-room, at which time she discovered her house had been ransacked, reports said.



YES YES...JUST ANOTHER GREAT REASON FOR ME TO POST A STORY ABOUT A TOILET.

Pareidolia

From wikipedia - The term pareidolia (pronounced /pæraɪˈdoʊliə/) describes a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) being perceived as significant. Common examples include seeing images of animals or faces in clouds, the man in the moon, and hearing hidden messages on records played in reverse.


Check out this picture...it took me a while but I eventually saw it and it's pretty wild (yes, make fun, I'm a simple man and the simpiest things interest me).

Have you seen Jesus today? Sent by Jessica Lundgren from Sweden to paranormal.about.com, you can see the clear profile of a giant bearded man with closed eyes. It does resemble common representations of a fellow named Jesus. Even though that enormous Jesus head doesn’t quite fit into the rest of the image. What’s going on there? Jessica writes that “the child died short after the photo was taken”.

ZACH COMES TO VISIT

What could go wrong with a brick fireplace?

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

An enemy must either be caressed or annihilated

Pot-Limit Omaha

by Barny Boatman

If you don’t have much experience playing Pot-Limit Omaha, a good rule of thumb is to play hands that can make the nuts because at a full table the pot will usually end up going to the player holding the best possible hand. If there are three flush cards on the board, the winning player will often show an Ace-high flush, and if the board pairs, the winner will usually have a full house. While flopping the nuts is nice, it’s even more important that you have redraws to make the nuts when the board changes on later streets.

Because you have four cards in your hand instead of just two, the starting hands in Omaha are much closer together in value than they are in Texas Hold ‘em. Any four random cards not containing a pair are never going to be that far behind any other starting hand. The values start to diverge on the flop and at that point they change dramatically. In Omaha, the best hand changes from street to street. The nuts almost never stay the same and the best hand on the flop will rarely be good on the river; if you’re going to continue on in a hand, you need to have a redraw that gives you plenty of outs.

More than anything, Pot-Limit Omaha is about straights and straight possibilities. You should always be looking to play starting hands that have a 10 or a 5 in them because many straights contain one or the other. Tens are particularly important because they’re more likely to make the nut straight for you. If there’s a lot of action on the flop and the board hasn’t paired, you really want to have a redraw to make the nut straight. If your hand’s got flush potential as well, all the better.

Unless you have some sort of redraw, one of the worst hands you can have on the flop in Pot-Limit Omaha is a small set because chances are good that you’ll end up losing to a bigger set, a straight, or a flush. For this reason, beginning players should avoid starting hands that feature small pairs like 5s or 7s. It’s more likely that these hands will get you in trouble than make you money – you’d be smart to fold them before the flop.

Having a redraw to make the nuts is so important in Pot-Limit Omaha that folding the nuts on the flop is often the best play if the board is scary and your hand has no chance of improving. This might sound crazy to Texas Hold ‘em players, but this situation occurs all the time in Omaha. The best way to combat this is to play starting hands that have all four cards working together so that if you do make a hand on the flop you can play it aggressively, knowing that your hand has a chance to improve on the turn or the river.

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about. Let’s say you’ve got J-10-3-2 and the flop comes 9-8-7. You’ve flopped the nut straight, but you can’t celebrate too much because if a Jack or a 10 falls on the turn or the river you won’t have the nut straight anymore. If there are two flush cards on the flop, you’re in even worse shape.

This is a very difficult situation to be in because any change that occurs on the board can ruin your hand. If the board pairs, you’re probably going to lose to a Full House. If another spade comes, you’re going to get beaten by a flush. Even if the straight you flopped somehow remains the nuts on the river, there’s a good chance you’re going to have to split the pot.

When you pick up a starting hand that has the potential to make a straight, it’s fine if the hand has a gap in it. Just remember that it’s far better to have a gap at the bottom of the hand than at the top. For example, J-10-9-7 is a better hand than J-9-8-7 because the first one allows for upward development. If the flop comes 8-6-5, you’ve made the nut straight with both hands, but if a 9 falls on the turn only the first hand allows you to make a higher straight. Ignorant of this concept, many players who are new to the game tend to overvalue a hand like 6-5-4-3. Even though the cards are perfectly connected, this hand is not as pretty as it looks because it doesn’t allow for much upward development.

As you can see, it’s not enough to flop the nuts in this game. You also need to have a redraw to make the nuts when the board changes; because in Pot-Limit Omaha, it always does.

Fw:

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Too Fat to Fish - IN STORES TODAY!!!

Too Fat To Fish is a book written by comedian and Howard Stern Show co-host Artie Lange, published by Spiegel & Grau, a division of Random House. Too Fat To Fish will be available in hard cover, audio CD, and audio download format on November 11, 2008. The book is a collection of short stories that happened throughout Lange's life, from his childhood to his recent USO trip to Afghanistan in July 2008. The foreword is written by Howard Stern, with Lange also dedicating the book to Stern. It is said that Lange writes about his "most personal revelation" somewhere in the book.



When Artie Lange joined the permanent cast of The Howard Stern Show in 2001, it was possibly the greatest thing ever to happen in the Stern universe, second only to the show’s move to the wild, uncensored frontier of satellite radio. Lange provided what Stern had yet to find all in the same place: a wit quick enough to keep pace with his own, a pathetic self-image to dwarf his own, a personal history both heartbreaking and hilarious, and an ingrained sense of self-sabotage that continually keeps things interesting.

A natural storyteller with a bottomless pit of material, Lange grew up in a close-knit, working-class Italian family in Union, New Jersey, a maniacal Yankees fan who pursued the two things his father said he was cut out for—sports and comedy. Tragically, Artie Lange Sr. never saw the truth in that prediction: He became a quadriplegic in an accident when Artie was eighteen and died soon after. But as with every trial in his life, from his drug addiction to his obesity to his fights with his mother, Artie mines the humor, pathos, and humanity in these events and turns them into comedy classics.

True fans of the Stern Show will find Artie gold in these pages: hilarious tales that couldn’t have happened to anyone else. There are stories from his days driving a Jersey cab, working as a longshoreman in Port Newark, and navigating the dark circuit of stand-up comedy. There are outrageous episodes from the frenzied heights of his coked-up days at MADtv, surprisingly moving stories from his childhood, and an account of his recent U.S.O. tour that is equally stirring and irreverent. But also in this volume are stories Artie’s never told before, including some that he deemed too revealing for radio.

Wild, shocking, and drop-dead hilarious, TOO FAT TO FISH is Artie Lange giving everything he’s got to give. And like a true pro, the man never disappoints.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

Don't mock the scarf, Nathaniel. It's my signature.

RALPH "CELEBRATES" THE NEW PRESIDENT

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Or didn't I?

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Did i?

MY STATE BY STATE PREDICTION FOR 2008

<p><strong>><a href='http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/interactives/campaign08/electoral-college/'>Electoral College Prediction Map</a></strong> - Predict the winner of the general election. Use the map to experiment with winning combinations of states. Save your prediction and send it to friends.</p>

Betting Out To Control Pot Size

By Kelly Kim

Intuitively, it would seem that checking and calling is the best way to keep a pot small when you’re uncertain as to whether or not you have the best hand. And often, that’s the case. But believe it or not, betting out can sometimes allow you to get to the showdown cheaper than checking. If your goal is to control the size of the pot, sometimes voluntarily putting chips in will actually keep the pot smaller than passively putting chips in only after your opponent does.

Here’s an example from a hand that I played during this year’s World Series of Poker Main Event that will illustrate this tactic. The blinds were 12,000/24,000 and I opened for 60,000 on the button. Usually when you open for 2 1/2 big blinds like that, especially on the button, it portrays some strength. In this case, I only had Q-J of hearts. The small blind called and the big blind folded.

The flop came A-10-rag; he checked, I bet 65,000 and he called. The turn card was a Queen – making me second pair – and he checked. This was the key moment in the hand. I decided to bet 100,000. I did this for pot control: I didn’t want to call a bet of 150,000 or 200,000 on the river, so I made a smaller bet at that point expecting it to freeze him on the river with most hands.

Let’s say my opponent had A-3. My small bet on the turn made it look like I had a strong hand and was milking him, wanting him to call. There was no way he could bet on the river with an Ace and no kicker; he was just as happy as I was to see a free showdown at that point.

It’s also important to note our stack sizes. I started the hand with about 600,000 in chips and he was deep, with about 1.5 million. By betting 100,000 on the turn, meaning I had committed more than one-third of my stack, he couldn’t try a bluff raise because it was too likely that I was pot-committed. On top of this, I had established a tight image and he had to respect the likelihood that I had a real hand. If he had come over the top, I would have found out that I was beat for a relatively cheap price.

The main goal of the turn bet was to get me to the showdown for 100,000 instead of a larger amount. If I’d checked there, with about 280,000 in the pot, he could very well have had Ace-baby, and my check would have told him that I didn’t have an Ace. He then could have easily bet about 150,000-200,000 on the river to extract value from me. He was looking for an amount that I might have paid off with a Queen or what looked like a bluff. If he had Ace-baby and opted for the 200,000-chip bet, I would have saved 100,000 by betting out on the turn.

Obviously, he could have thrown a wrinkle into the plan by moving all in on the river. Again, this is a situation where you have to incorporate image, and I’d been playing real tight to that point – he was just as scared of me as I was of him.

What if I did have him beat with the Queen? Let’s say he had J-10 or K-10; he would have been priced in to call, and I wanted him to – I needed to pick up the extra 100,000 for my stack. I was willing to take the risk of seeing the river because he only had five or six outs.

Against other players who are capable of seeing the river card and just moving in, I might have tried a different strategy, like playing real small ball and checking the turn while being prepared to pay off 175,000 on the river. But against this guy, I knew for sure he was going to check the river unless he made trips or a straight.

As it turned out, I never saw his hand. He checked the river, I checked behind. He was disgusted when I showed him the Queen, so it was obvious that he had a 10 and I turned him. But he couldn’t have just had a 10. For him to have called with a 10 on the turn he needed to have a straight card there – he either had to be holding J-10 or K-10. And that was exactly the hand I wanted to be up against on the turn.

This situation was very circumstantial because it was based on stack size and image, which are very important in live tournaments. Because of the size of my chip stack, I was playing really tight and couldn’t afford to get out of line. I couldn’t see many flops. I played with this opponent for a while to set up this play, and I knew it was the perfect situation for it. I wanted to get to a showdown because I thought queens could have been the best hand, but didn’t want to pay 200,000 in the end to find out.