Carl Sagan

I read Sagan's books Cosmos and Pale Blue Dot last year, and can wholeheartedly recommend them for anyone interested in science in general and history of science in particular. Just a few days ago, I re-read his fictional work, "Contact" (later a major motion picture starring Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey). It's a good book. It's also a good movie, with a surprisingly true-to-the-book script. As always, movies take away a lot of the learning experience of a book because it doesn't make good drama to have a voice-over explaining all the science, a problem CSI has solved by invoking corny conversations between their characters ("what the DNA-analysis does is...", explained to a person who's supposedly an expert on the topic).

I'm sliding off-topic here. Anyway. My somewhat recent elevation of Sagan as a scientific hero of mine (a promotion earned not necessarily for his academic achievments but for his contageous enthusiasm and efforts to make others interested in the subject) made me think the video below was a little bit more cool than I think most of you will find it.



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My last post, on river bet-sizing, sparked some misunderstandings when discussed on CardsChat. I'm not saying that a small bet-size is optimal for a river bet. I'm saying that a smaller bet-size is what you should be shooting for. Smaller isn't necessarily small, if that makes sense. Now, bet-sizing for value was actually just a build-up to the post I was going to make next: Bet-sizing for bluffs. I'll put that up later this week, but cunning readers may guess where I'm going with it.

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Okay, one more video to link: Sam Harris spoke at TED in February. I saw that his name was on the speakers' schedule and have been waiting for them to publish it ever since. Now they have, and I wasn't disappointed.