In this post I will argue that it is more shameful to engage in psychotherapy than it is to engage in prostitution, both from the perspective of client and supplier.

First off, let's basically define our terms and so on. A prostitute sells sex, while the psychotherapist sells conversation and informed advice (not necessarily expert advice though). It seems to me that a psychotherapist is really someone who (purportedly) is really good at life, and can advise those who aren't good at it how they should go about improving their own. Somebody who feels the need to pay somebody reasonably intelligent to talk to them and advise them how to live is, in my eyes, quite pathetic. They must be some combination of stupid and lonely, since conversation and advice are both things that can be found freely. The cost of conversation is generally the same cost associated with making friendships and being social to some extent. Psychotherapists typically don't give advice that can't be extracted from anybody who is reasonably successful at life.

What the prostitute offers is also available freely. However I think it's clearly the case that free sex is harder work than free friendship (at least for men). Somebody who finds it more worthwhile to buy sex than to work at it is less pathetic in my opinion than somebody who finds it worthwhile to buy friendship than to work at it.

Then from that conclusion we can derive that psychotherapists ought to be more ashamed of their job than prostitutes because they are making a living from the more pathetic and desperate members of the community than the prostitute is.

But before I just leave it at that, I think it is worth noting that sex is something that men desire more than friendship and find harder to get, and friendship is something that women desire more than sex and find harder to get. I don't think these facts are entirely symmetrical though. At a guess (I am pretty uninformed about this), I would say that 95% of people who pay for sex are male, whereas only about 60% of people who pay for friendship are female. Also I suspect that the majority of men who pay psychotherapists are probably paying for advice about how to get free sex (particularly those who believe it is deeply immoral to pay for sex, or are just only interested in sex with somebody who has a symmetrical desire).

Perhaps prostitution for men is similar to psychotherapy for women. Suppose there is a couple (long-term or married, possible children), with elements Ann and Bob. Typically if it became common knowledge that Bob had paid prostitutes to satisfy his sexual urges that would tend to result in the end of the relationship, or would seriously damage the relationship. Ann would probably be convinced that Bob no longer loved her, and in reality most couples that follow this story that have remained together have done so for reasons other than love I suspect. But if it becomes common knowledge that Ann has paid for friendship then this is seen as completely standard. As far as I can see it is an equal event in terms of indicating a person's desire to remain in a relationship for a woman to seek psychotherapy and a man to seek a prostitute.

I have a serious problem I think. Last night I was so sure I would withdraw my money today, but instead I just thought "What the hell? Let's have another go!" and lo and behold I lose £500, a huge chunk of what remains. The rest has now been withdrawn, but how can I ever trust that my future self won't just re-deposit it? I have completely Grahamed it. The thing is when I think of £1100 or whatever it is I had, I thought "Yes! Great", but when I think of £650 the value seems to me to be less than half of what I had. This is what Kahnemann and Tversky call Framing. This is a fundamental aspect of a gambling addiction I think. In the past I have thought "I just lost $5. I'm prepared to gamble $50 to get that $5 back, and I'll be prepared to gamble $500 to get the $50 back." The money we have lost we value a lot more than any money we could win. And we are prepared to throw away the rest of our bankroll trying to regain losses. Even though I am completely aware of this it still happens to me, frequently too. I think it is my biggest weakness actually. Perhaps not just in poker but in life as well. I don't think that anybody who falls for it can really be said to even be approaching an acceptable degree of rationality.

This isn't a massively tilt-induced post. But the last 3 hours has been so ridiculous for me. This is basically what has happened recently in my poker life.

A few weeks ago I made the "I am Shafkat" entry. This happened because at the time I had around 1300 euros online, which I had generated from just 75 euros within only a few weeks. At that time I also had around £280 in my official poker bankroll, an actual bank account. So in total I had around £1300. Then in the space of a few hours I blew that whole 1300 euros. I was absolutely gutted. That was just a ridiculous amount of money for me. Only then did I realise I only had around £280 left in my account. I had actually thought the figure was more like £500. So I just thought "Fuck it", and stuck the rest onto Full Tilt Poker. I grinded that for around a week and turned it into around $1200. Then I had ANOTHER stupid session. I was playing high stakes to chase the losses I'd made on low stakes and it turned into another cycle of losses. It was down to around $300 at its lowest, meaning my whole bankroll was as low as £150. Now had I lost that $300 then I probably would have been a bit annoyed at myself later, but not that much, because $300 was so feeble it almost wasn't worth having. In my last tilt-induced actions I spun the $300 back up to around $800. This included one absolutely shocking play. I don't have the hand history but it went something like this:

NL Holdem Blinds $1/$2 6-handed.
A posts SB
B posts BB
Villain raises to $60. (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
C folds.
D folds.
Hero is dealt 99. (Yeah baby!!)
Hero raises all in to $85
A folds
B folds
Villain insta-calls, shows AA.
Hero shits himself.
Flop XYZ
Turn 9
River W
Hero doubles up.

That is seriously the worst hand of poker I have ever played. It wasn't most of my money at the time, as I had most of it on limit tables. But the instant I saw the AA (I knew it in my heart before that though), I just thought "You crossed the line there. You're on tilt supposedly because you are getting incredibly unlucky, not because you're a bad player. SO WHAT WAS THAT???????!!!!!" I instantly left all my tables, with around $800 in the account, uninstalled the software, and made a promise not to play poker again (except for harmless freerolls) for a whole month, all of March.

Next episode:

I had requested rakeback on my Poker.co.uk account in January, when I had had the gold rush up to 1300 euros. But only in Early March had I been given the rakeback, which was around 350 euros. Add to this another 150 euros I had won from a freeoll and spun up, and I was looking at a decent-sized bankroll basically gifted to me on the software I had had my first meltdown on. Coupled with the remaining $800 on FTP I suddenly found myself with a second chance. It's amazing how many times I have gone completely bust yet money has turned up from somewhere (not from my pocket) and the whole campaign has restarted. I got back onto FTP. I grinded the limit tables. Amazingly my STT results were appalling and I have no explanation for why because I was raping the low stakes cash games. Soon enough I had grinded up to $1400, the most I've ever had on FTP. That was what I had this afternoon.

Then this happened: Basically exactly the same thing that happened when I became Shafkat. I dropped half a buyin at my $2/$4 game and suddenly I find myself regaining it on $8/$16, and then $25/$50. And then it was all gone. I actually thought I was playing quite well. I just happened to be on a table where somebody seemed to be dealt AA every other hand. Unbelievable really. And every time I flopped top pair and it still looked strong by the river. But anyway...I got completely busted. I just closed down the software, and thought, "Wow: that happened again. After the situation I went through in February I can't believe that just happened." See, part of me had thought that my February episode would be an important lesson in the great scheme of things. I deserved it for having such bankroll management, and it would be the stimulus I needed to either quit poker or learn to play the game properly and respectfully. But it turns out it didn't do that at all, because less than a month later I've done it all again.

So I'm sitting there quite calmly, wondering what to do. Only 2 hours earlier I had been lawnmowering the $2/$4 table and watching my bonus get released as I raked more pots. And the thing is this: My second Shafkat wasn't a good lesson either, because then I went onto Poker.co.uk and started playing with my 500 euros like a proper, PROPER gambling addict. I sort of feel ashamed, but I couldn't really stop myself. The thing is, like Shafkat, if I've just lost $1400, then 500 euros means absolutely nothing to me. It will do the next day of course, but when you've lost a lot, keeping what you've got left just seems pointless. I actually used decision theory in my reasoning and concluded that 500 euros was worth nothing. If I could spin it up to 800 euros I could leave it at that, admit I had a bad night and come back another time.

Actually as I recall, I think my strategy was more like this: 500 euros is nothing, 800 euros is something. After that $1400 loss I am withdrawing my Poker.co.uk funds, but only if it's even worth having. I will never play poker again, in fact what I withdraw I will probably spend on something nice and show an actual profit from poker over 4 years, even if it's about 100x less than minimum wage. So I gambled the 500 euros, with in my mind the notion that poker was absolutely shit and I'd never play it again, even though I was playing it right now. And I was playing quite well actually. I spun it up to the 800 euros. I had told myself I would quit then but I just didn't. I decided to make the limit a nice even 1000 euros. Then I would quit. But I knew even then that if I got to 1000 euros I would probably make it 1200 euros before I quit. I bobbed up and around the 1000 euro area for about 20 minutes. I had gone on a rush against a table of fish, but now they were catching up with me. So I left the table, with around 900 euros.

Even though I had told myself that that 800 euros was actually good enough, I had already tasted the feel of around 1100 euros and I needed to get back up there. 900 euros was now worthless in comparison to 1100 euros. So...I did it again. I stuck it on yet a HIGHER STAKES table. Now when I originally shafkatted, the highest table I played on was 50/100 Turkish dollars. Well today I stuck my 900 euros on a 50/100 USD table. The big blind was literally £25+. Sometimes you get such a bad hand on the BB that if the button raises and the SB folds you ought to fold too. So whenever I did that I was literally giving away £25. Utter madness. Now the thing is I was still playing well. I continued to win. I thought "Imagine if I spun this up so far that I actually end the day ON PROFIT, including the FTP catastrophe!" These are the thoughts of a diseased mind if there is such a thing. At some point a voice of reason managed to break through to the virus in my mind, and simply said "Dude...listen. Just fucking leave the table. Just leave. Just leave." So I eventually did. And now my plan of action is to withdraw what I have on there, which is 1458 euros. I tripled my 500 euros in about 30 minutes. I am now quite certain I am going to withdraw the whole lot, the sooner the better. I will do it tomorrow. So that will leave me with around £1100 in my account, where it should be.

The thing is, I know I played a great game on Poker.co.uk, on both my first table and the ludicrously high stakes table. I was the best player, and I played calmly and made the right decisions. I'm looking back at my hand history now at the biggest wins and losses on that table. I am fairly certain they will be the biggest wins/losses I have ever had in poker. Let's have a look:

This is the biggest win:

* Hand 1000801131 *
50.00/100.00 Texas Hold'em (FL) - 18 March 2008 01:53:47
Table TH 814 (Real /Cash Game )
Seat 1: Hero (1760.00)
Seat 2: Donk 1 (6286.74)
Seat 3: Villain (3951.28)
Seat 4: Donk 3 (994.64)
VIllain post SB 25.00
Donk 3 post BB 50.00
Deal
Hero [10d, Ad]
Donk 1 [N/A, N/A]
Villain [N/A, N/A]
Donk 3 [N/A, N/A]
* Bet Round 1 *
Hero Raise to 100.00
Donk 1 Fold
Villain Raise to 150.00 (this guy had done this from the SB several times, so I was confident I was ahead of his range here)
Donk 3 Fold
Hero Call 150.00
* Flop(Board): * : [Kd, 6d, Jd] (I flop the nuts)
* Bet Round 2 *
Villain Bet 50.00
Hero Raise to 100.00 (I know he's not folding here.)
Villain Raise to 150.00
Hero Raise to 200.00
Villain Call 200.00 (He calls a 4 bet, so I put him on a set or top 2)
* Turn(Board): * : [Kd, 6d, Jd, Kh] (This card scares me)
* Bet Round 3 *
Villain Check
Hero Check (Missed a bet??)
* River(Board): * : [Kd, 6d, Jd, Kh, 10h]
* Bet Round 4 *
Villain Check
Hero Bet 100.00
Villain Call 100.00
* Showdown * : Rake: 3.00 Total Pot: 947.00
Hero [10d, Ad] Ace high flush Win: 947.00
Donk 1 Fold Win: 0.00
Villain Fold Win: 0.00
Donk 3 Fold Win: 0.00

He says afterwards that he had QQ, so was strong pre-flop but on the flop not really at all. There was nearly $1000 in that pot. I am simply a buffoon.

My biggest loss:

* Hand 1000802890 *
50.00/100.00 Texas Hold'em (FL) - 18 March 2008 01:57:04
Table TH 814 (Real /Cash Game )
Seat 1: Hero (2501.00)
Seat 2: Donk 1 (6011.74)
Seat 3: Villain (3848.28) (This is the same villain)
Seat 4: Donk 3 (619.64)
Donk 3 post SB 25.00
Hero post BB 50.00
Deal
Hero [As, 8c]
Donk 1 [N/A, N/A]
Villain [N/A, N/A]
Donk 3 [N/A, N/A]
* Bet Round 1 *
Donk 1 Fold
Villain Raise to 100.00
Donk 3 Fold
Hero Call 100.00
* Flop(Board): * : [3d, 10c, 10d]
* Bet Round 2 *
Hero Check
Villain Bet 50.00
Hero Call 50.00
* Turn(Board): * : [3d, 10c, 10d, 7c]
* Bet Round 3 *
Hero Check
Villain Bet 100.00
Hero Call 100.00
* River(Board): * : [3d, 10c, 10d, 7c, 7d]
* Bet Round 4 *
Hero Check
Villain Bet 100.00
Hero Call 100.00
* Showdown * : Rake: 3.00 Total Pot: 722.00
Hero Fold Win: 0.00
Donk 1 Fold Win: 0.00
Villain [Jd, Jc] Two pair jacks and tens Win: 722.00
Donk 3 Fold Win: 0.00

I lost $350 on that hand. It's actually not as bad as a pot I lost on my first Shafkat, that almost took out my entire bankroll on its own. That's this one:

* Hand 950282536 *
50.00/100.00 Texas Hold'em (FL) - 11 February 2008 13:43:48
(This is Turkish dollars)
Table TH 35 (Real /Cash Game )
Seat 2: Donk 1 (1448.00)
Seat 3: Hero (1317.00)
Seat 4: Villain (4295.13)
Seat 5: Donk 2 (5469.00)
Hero post SB 25.00
Villain post BB 50.00
Deal
Hero [Kd, 3h]
Villain [N/A, N/A]
Donk 2 [N/A, N/A]
* Bet Round 1 *
Donk 2 Fold
Hero Call 50.00
Villain Check
* Flop(Board): * : [4h, 5h, 5c]
* Bet Round 2 *
Hero Bet 50.00
Villain Raise to 100.00
Hero Raise to 150.00
Villain Call 150.00
* Turn(Board): * : [4h, 5h, 5c, 5d]
* Bet Round 3 *
Hero Bet 100.00
Villain Raise to 200.00
Hero Call 200.00
* River(Board): * : [4h, 5h, 5c, 5d, Kh]
* Bet Round 4 *
Hero Bet 100.00
Villain Raise to 200.00
Hero Raise to 300.00
Villain Raise to 400.00
Hero Call 400.00
* Showdown * : Rake: 3.00 Total Pot: 1597.00
Donk 1 [N/A, N/A] Highest card four Win: 0.00
Hero Fold Win: 0.00
Villain [5s, 2d] Four of a kind, fives Win: 1597.00
Donk 2 Fold Win: 0.00

That hand makes me cringe every time. I only just noticed that one of the players was on the same table during both high stakes games I was involved in, the one in February and the one tonight. He is Donk 1 in the first and Donk 2 in the second (in order of posting them). That's how much of a donk I am that I didn't even notice him. Anyway, in the Turkish dollar pot I lost 800 Turkish dollars. (Also edit, they're really called "Turkish New Lira") That was equivalent to a loss of $634.52, according to a currency converter from today. I played that hand awfully. At that time I was just driven by greed. It's a bad spot to try to steal in limit when your opponent has 4 of a Kind. The Full House on the river meant I had all but a 5, AA and KK beat. I still should have only lost 200 TRY though even at the river. I am still disgusted by that hand. At least a +$497 win nearly makes up for it.

Anyway, that was a bit of a tangent. This entry has been massive now and I shouldn't really be glorifying the size of the tables I've been playing on, and the hands I've won and lost. I ought to be ashamed to be involved in them at all. I think I have now reached the conclusion that my habit is out of control. I will never make money if I continue to play like this. It's like I have no respect for the value of my own time. One day I'll be grinding 50c/$1 limit and the next $50/$100. At my highest point tonight I had around £1060 in total. Hmmm... It seems I now have more than that. I now have around £1100. And the good thing is I can withdraw the whole lot, and I probably have about £50 worth of rakeback coming to me on both networks which I could potentially use to re-build again. So actually this hasn't been that bad of a night...

What kind of conclusion is that though?? I can't realistically pretend that this was okay can I? It clearly is not okay. I think I really need to give this up, at least online poker and at least cash games. I'm a tournament player really, I actually enjoy tournament games. That's why I built this roll, so I could play live tournaments that had buy-ins and a bit of a potential prize. Over the last 2 months I've made and lost a lot of money. I've had a massive turnover so to speak, playing cash games. But it's just been so stressful that I just don't think I can continue to play them and remain mentally healthy. It's gone beyond a joke now. It hasn't been fun at all. It's just a nasty addiction. Part of me hopes that this whole episode will be over now. But even if that is the case, the problem is still that I am disposed to act like I have acted. To be honest I don't regret my actions because I don't believe I could have acted any differently. Which makes it hard to ever learn a lesson from something like this. I think the only lesson I've learned is that I have a problem. But I haven't worked out a way to get rid of the problem yet. Maybe I would prefer to keep the problem and my free will than get rid of the problem and act according to somebody else's will (or the will of my second order desires). That is a completely different (philosophical) issue and it isn't worth discussing with the mess that is this chapter of my life.

I much prefer female vocals to male vocals. There are just so many bands fronted by males and male singers in the world that I would say that I listen to slightly more of those than female vocals, but still, I listen to female singers quite a lot more than the average music fan. Here is a compilation of my top 40 favourite female singers. They have been selected based on how much I like their music, the quality of their voice, and the passion with which they sing. Some of these singers I don't listen to very often or have only heard a few songs from, but I like their music. I think the only three singers I would consider should be on this list that aren't are, Shirley Bassey, Christina Aguilera and Celine Dion. They aren't on it because besides their voice I don't really like their music. They are all brilliant singers though. So, onto the list. Also, Eva Cassidy should be in this list but I forgot about her and it's too late now. (i.e. I am too lazy) I will reveal my top 40 in reverse order.

40. "Ronnie" Yoshiko Fujiyama (The 5678s)

39. KatieJane Garside (Daisy Chainsaw, Queen Adreena and Solo)

38. Morgan Lander (Kittie)

37. Marie Yacoub (Malicorne and Solo)

36. Karen O (Yeah Yeah Yeahs)

35. Stacey Kiser (Unfinished Thought)

34. Tarja Turunen (Nightwish and Solo)

33. Nina Persson (The Cardigans and Solo)

32. Sheryl Crow (Solo)

31. Kate Rusby (Solo)

30. Agent M (Tsunami Bomb and The Action Design)

29. Sharleen Spiteri (Texas, Solo)

28. Dido (Solo)

27. Candice Night (Blackmore's Night)

26. June Tabor (Silly Sisters, The Oyster Band, Solo)

25. Corin Tucker (Heavens to Betsy, Sleater-Kinney)

24. Sharon den Adel (Within Temptation)

23. Jessica Mayers (Sugarcoma)

22. Dolores O`Riordan (Cranberries, Solo)

21. Fergie (Black-Eyed Peas, Solo)

20. Melissa Auf der Maur (Tinker, Hole, Smashing Pumpkins, Auf der Maur)

19. Kristin Hersh (Throwing Muses, Solo, 50 Foot Wave)

18. Madonna (Solo)

17. Martha Tilston (Mouse, Solo)

16. Laila Khan (Sonic Boom 6, Babyboom)

15. Courtney Love (Hole, Solo)

14. Brody Dalle (Distillers, Spinnerette)

13. Joni Mitchell (Solo)

12. Gay Woods (Gay and Terry Woods, Sweeney's Men, Steeleye Span, Dr. Strangely Strange, Woods Band, Auto Da Fe)

11. Cristina Scabbia (Lacuna Coil)

10. Alanis Morissette (Solo)

9. Heinie Immonen (Bitch Alert)

8. Cerys Matthews (Catatonia, Solo)

7. Karine Polwart (Malinky, Solo)

6. Maddy Prior (Maddy Prior & Tim Hart, Steeleye Span, Silly Sisters, The Carnival Band, Solo)

5. Amy Lee (Evanescence)

4. Joan Baez (Solo, with Bob Dylan)

3. Gwen Stefani (No Doubt, Solo)

2. Andrea Corr (The Corrs, Solo)

1. Sandy Denny (The Strawbs, Fairport Convention, Fotheringay, Solo, The Bunch)

For a while I have been doing some elementary dice-walking. My method is thus: I take an A-Z of Bristol, a protractor, a ruler, a coin and some dice of various shapes. I locate my current location on the map. I then flip the coin, roll a D30 and a D6. If the coin is heads, then I will go east, if tails, then west. The D6 then determines which sixth of the available 180 degrees I will travel. So if heads landed, then a roll of 1 will mean a bearing between 001 and 030. If 2, between 031 and 060 etc. The D30 determines which of the 30 degrees within that sixth. So the following "table" should demonstrate what sorts of outcomes generate what bearings.

Coin---D6---D30---Bearing
Heads---4----25----115
Tails---6----5-----335

Then I roll the D30 again. I divide the outcome by 2 and that is the distance in centimetres I must walk to on my map, at the bearing decided. I have a 15cm ruler. Unfortunately a centimetre doesn't really correspond to anything physically relevant in real life, since the map is 4 inches per mile. That means that the radius of the circle formed by all the possible locations I could walk to is about 1.5 miles. There are 5400 locations that can be generated from just this one trial. If I do this experiment twice, so that I go to one place and then go to another place using the first location as the starting point for the second experiment, there are 291 million possible journeys I can make within what would be a 28 square mile circle. Every unique journey is equally likely. With three separate routes there are over 157 billion journeys I could make in a 63 square mile circle. Also note that it's extremely unlikely I would end up between say 4 and 4.5 miles away from my original location. For that to happen I would need to get similar bearings on each trial and very high values on the D30 distance results. It's clearly calculable, but I'm not sure how. I'd estimate though, that the probability of ending up between 4 and 4.5 miles away from my starting point would be less than 0.00001.

So I was thinking of how to integrate this sort of system into a wider space with greater probabilities. It's actually possible to cover the whole globe, and randomly generate one very specific area on the planet. How specific? Incredibly specific actually. on my primitive protractor model the distance between a result like (H 5 20 23) and (H 5 20 24) is in real terms about 80 metres. Plus I am hardly interpreting the map precisely. I probably end up around 30m away from the exact point specified by the dice and that's about as close as I can get.

Now suppose a system whereby we can generate any metre squared point on the surface of the planet. First off, we would need to generate one of the UTM zones so that we can "zoom in" on some part of the world. Here is a map of the UTM zones.

So there are 1200 of those. Then there is the GPS. A typical GPS measurement looks like this:

18T 0424200 5097850

The 18T represents the UTM zone, so looking at that map we can tell that this is around the New York area, probably with parts of the U.S.A and Canada inside it. The second number is the eastings and the third the northings. Unfortunately these aren't jointly specific to the UTM zone itself. The easting represents the distance east from the meridian, in this case, the 18th. Imagine a map of just 18T and the 18th meridian will be the left or westward border. The northing is the distance from the equator which makes generating a random location now quite problematic. It seems that we can get a random longitude. Each UTM zone is about 667 km long. So there should be a method of randomly determining the UTM zone, and then determining an eastings, i.e. a distance from the meridian. Our problem then is determining our northing. Use of UTM here seems pointless, because the GPS is given in terms of distance from the equator. I'm not sure how to get around this yet. That is all for now.

I haven't really got into the spirit of this year's American political contest. I never do usually anyway, although I showed a bit more interest when it came to George Bush I think. This year, Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton are the main contenders for the Democratic candidacy, and one of them will probably face off against the Republican John McCain later this year, and I think whoever wins the Democratic vote is likely to be the next President.

Now I know very little about American politics, so when I analyse who I think would make a better leader between Clinton and Obama, I have very little to go on. I know neither of their policies, if they have any. I know very little about their previous performances. This is what I do know: Clinton is a senator but more famously husband of ex-President Bill Clinton. Now I hear some people say, "She shouldn't be in politics! She's just a housewife with no political experience. She's only senator now in a long-running attempt to re-gain the family presidency." Then I hear others say that actually she's had a long career in politics. I don't even know. I'm pretty certain that during Bill Clinton's 8 year presidency she was a full-time First Lady. Before that though she was a very successful lawyer, so obviously extremely competent. As for Obama, it appears he comes from a family dynasty, but not a hugely powerful one like the Bush family. It appears to me that before he even decided to run for the presidency he was probably the most successful member of his family and ancestry. So I would say he is new blood.

Then there are the most significant differences between the two. He is a black man and she is a white woman. They will both be the first of their kind to be President. Well one of them will be anyway. Most of their momentum seems to be based around these corresponding facts. But based on all the information I have, I think I much prefer that Obama becomes President. My main reason is that he doesn't base his image on being black. By that I'm not referring to the fact that his skin colour is relatively light, but that he acts like a white person. Socially he probably is more white than black anyway. When I look at Hilary, I just think "That's disgusting." Her image is highly feminine. Compare her to Margaret Thatcher. I don't think anybody really had a problem with her becoming Prime Minister because she didn't act very femininely. That's not to say she was ugly as this photo shows.

She was 54 when she became PM. Hilary is 64 and often looks like a tart in comparison with Thatcher. I don't want somebody in the White House who is running the country as a woman would. Obama isn't going to run the country as a black man would. Being black isn't such an integral aspect of his identity as being a woman is for Hilary. I feel like she will be more proud to be the first female President than Obama will be proud to be the first black President, and therefore I think her motivations for running are worse than his. Plus what is with her facial mannerisms?

I bet sometimes when she meets Obama he thinks "What the fuck is wrong with her?" She's too needy. She's one of those alpha females who likes to crush men's balls in her hands, ultra feminist and thinks all men are against her. Thatcher was nothing like that: she completely slipped through and made no issue of her femininity (except for occasional jokes). It doesn't bother me at all that Obama might be the first black President. There are a few black supremacists who would probably use that as some kind of justification for their beliefs, but what they spout is such nonsense that nobody even listens or gives a damn. If Hilary becomes President we'll have all these feminist academic-types blabbing non-stop about how great she and all women are. That is a state of affairs I really don't want. It's bad enough as it is.

So the conclusion is possibly that I am more misogynistic than racist. The truth is I'm not really misogynistic, I just hate that class of women that make an issue about their gender when it is entirely irrelevant, like when it comes to philosophy or politics. And then they make it their life's work to defeat as many men as possible (whilst simultaneously engaging in general bitchiness with female competitors). I don't hate you because you're a woman. I hate you because you think I hate you because you're a woman. I can see why the evidence tends to support both hypotheses, but the attitude of these women is the result of 1) an uncritical approach to the relation between theory and evidence, 2) the innate desire (which is partially genetic might I add) to want it to be the case that I and other men hate (or discriminate against generally) all women, and possibly 3) the desire to have been born male. Probably only the third of those is a reasonable desire to have, although acting upon it in the way these women do isn't rational.

I didn't lose any money though. But I could have. Plus I seem to be defying Reflection because I am holding two contradictory beliefs at the same time. Maybe, I'm not sure what the explanation is at the moment. Basically what happened is this:

I was fairly confident that the bottom three teams in the Premiership at the moment will be the three that get relegated at the end of the season. Yet I used the BBC Sport Premiership predictor today, which you can find here:

Premier League Predictor

...and it turns out that I really believe that Sunderland will be one of the teams that gets relegated. The predictor simulates the state of the Premiership after you input your predictions for every match between now and the end of the season. I wasn't consciously keeping track of the points as I was doing it, but somehow I thought that Sunderland would probably be safe. Their last game is against Arsenal, and I also believe that probably Arsenal will need to win that game to win the Premiership, so I don't think Sunderland can win or draw it even if their survival depends on it. Strangely enough I predicted that the score would be 2-0 to Arsenal. Really I believe that 1-0 to Arsenal will be enough for them to win the Premiership, and also 1-0 to Arsenal will be enough for Sunderland to stay up, but the Dutch-Book problem doesn't go away because then it would be Bolton that goes down, and not Reading.

Just for some reference, here is the current table:

And here is what I think will go down:

Now maybe I have a way out here... perhaps my two views are consistent. I actually find the above prediction to be extremely extremely unlikely. I'd give it a credence of one in at least a million chance of being correct. The reason it is my prediction is because of all the different possibilities there are (which include unbelievable events like West ham winning the league and Tottenham being relegated [I think]), I think it is the most likely. So perhaps my position could be consistent if even though I think the most likely scenario has Sunderland going down, overall the probability of Sunderland going down is less than that of Reading going down. Seems a bit of a cop-out.

Is there something to be said about Putnam's analysis of the (conceptual) possibility of us being brains-in-vats (to which he claims there is no possibility) with Elga's treatment of conflicting possibilities for self-location (Dr. Evil, Sleeping Beauty)? Very early days yet but I think there might be something to be said here.