Ben Jao Ming

So in about 2 months from now I’ll be listening to (amongst others):

• Youthmovie System Soundtrack
• Built To Spill
• Do Make Say Think
• Shellac
• Brightblack Morninglight
• The Books
• Band of Horses
• Grizzly Bear
• ISIS
• Explosions In The Sky
• Modest Mouse
• Mogwai
• Yo La Tengo
• Les Savy Fav
• AND Wilco

I can’t believe how great the program is already… it’s gonna be the festival of a lifetime. And only 6,000 tickets available for 3 stages. I hope they don’t put too many bands on simultaneously.

Expect pictures!

ATP vs. The Fans is the greatest concept for a festival ever… they put on a few great names and let the fans vote for the rest. Explosions In The Sky, Modest Mouse, Les Savy Fav and Wilco are all coming because of votes. I of course voted for some others hoping they, too, would show up… there are still 20 names left to publish afterall… so I voted for The Evens, Envy, These Arms Are Snakes, Of Montreal, Jens Lekman, American Analog Set and Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin… yep, why hold back!? Obviously the booker is some kind of god…

Greenpeace is a kind of b/w thing for many people. They either dig it or they don’t. I just started working there. First task was to translate Green My Apple into Danish. That went down pretty well, I think. Now, this campaign probably triggers something quite common amongst the Greenpeace haters out there. Why bash Apple? Isn’t that just some media humping stunt as usual. Apple can’t possibly be the worst environmental issue – far from.

My answer to that: Yes, Apple isn’t the biggest issue, and yes, it’s a good target because of media attention. But that’s not the purpose of the campaign, and people saying that have completely misunderstood everything. Now, the big issue is: E-waste. Now THAT’S actually a big problem. And Greenpeace wants to help solve that problem, but that’s very difficult since the producers of E-waste are so numerous. We have to start somewhere.

One thing that could be done about this: Innovation. We need better products free from chemicals that make them dangerous when being disposed of. Secondly we need products with a long life cycle. That means iPods capable of upgrading.

But another part-solution to the problem is called producer responsibility. Since it’s not being legally enforced in more than a handful of European countries, it’s up to Greenpeace to push for more legislation and voluntary producer responsibility. We need manufacturers to implement full product take-back in order to have an economic incitement for making recyclable products.

Apple’s part in all this? They HAVE to push forward. E-waste is a giant problem. We need action, and since other companies are actually pushing forward, we want to stimulate Apple to join the competition. So far Greenpeace has come up with Guide To Clean Electronics. This creates some sort of economic incitement for becoming cleaner at least. But work will continue, and hopefully soon people will see the purpose of Green My Apple in more than just words of encouragement.

…yep, I flopped Quads on a very loosely called all-in.

I would like to have a better understanding of what just happened tonight. I hit 2 straight flushes in less than 2 hours. In that period I definitely saw less than 500 hands. Now, the odds of that happening are EXTREMELY low:

1 in 72,195 * 1 in 72,195 hands / ~500 hands = ~1 in 10,424,236

And I want to add this: Just this last Wednesday I also hit a straight flush. I haven’t played more than about a 1,000 hands between those two events. So the total probability of what has happened all-in-all is probably about 1 in 4-500,000,000. Please tell me I’m dreaming and these screen shots are unreal…..

To be totally fair, I probably understated those estimates, since I only see about 1 hand a minute – maybe even less. I’m not sure. But I did exaggerate the number of hands, so maybe what happened was actually one in a billion. But so is every other somewhat unique series of combinations in poker – I just happened to hit straight flushes. And I’ve played over 300 sit’n'gos without ever seeing one.