Wowowowowowowowoowow
I began play yesterday with 565K chips. My girlfriend was preparing to fly out here to join me. While she was at the airport, I lost most of chips and was down to 135K. I called to warn her that there was a very real danger of my being eliminated before she arrived. She hates flying, and I didn’t want her to spend five hours on the plane each way for nothing. She still had 20 minutes before boarding, so I told her it was her call and I’d let her know if anything changed. Twenty minutes later, she sent me a text message: “On brd. I hv confidence in you. ”

Two days later, there are 80 players left, and I am in second place with 4,444,000 chips. We are all guaranteed $77,200. I really don’t know how I made it through the day at all, let alone with so many chips; my table was so tough, full of really solid players.

This is me with another player named Jamal, we’ve been friends since we played together two days ago. I got moved to his table at the end of the day, and we both made it through.

Thanks to everyone who’s called, written, posted, etc. to congratulate me or wish me well. I am somewhere between terrified and exhilarated.

Much love,
Andrew

***

what kind of contest can we imagine
what topic for debate
what form for crafting how the contest comes together
will will bring BOSTON together

all politics is local
tip o’neill says so
and my senator galluccio who sponsors little league
and dimasi the speaker of our house
and our governor deval
speak for massachusetts
speak for WE the PEOPLE

will@GALLERYxiv

***
look what comes in this morning’s mail

from  andrew at bostondebate.org

4:38 AM (9 hours ago)

Well, despite starting the day with the second largest chip stack, I ended up getting eliminated from the 2008 World Series of Poker in 35th place, winning $193,000. It’s hard to complain about that result, and if you told me a week ago that I would do so well, I would have been elated. But once we were down to 79 players and I was in such great shape, I started dreaming of the final table, so it’s a bit of disappointment. I’m sure that will pass soon, though.

Overall I made a great run, met a lot of friendly and interesting people, and had a blast. It was even more exciting to have all of you following along and cheering me on. Thanks for all your support,

Andrew

**
PARTY on wednesday at a very cool galleryXIV in the south end where ABRAHAM OBAMA is on display. please invite all in the boston area who have been following you to come and raise a glass to andrew.

Andrew Brokos, a.k.a. Foucault, the poker philosopher, did wonderfully at World Series Of Poker. i am hosting a party to celebrate his achievement at galleryXIV 450 harrison st in the south end at 7pm on Wednesday JULY !6 2008. Please come by to see Andrew, hear his stories, experience ABRAHAM OBAMA, have drinks and party.
looking forward to seeing you then.

Charles Nesson, a.k.a. eon

:

i want to thank everybody for coming here today and especially the people who were here from the beginning

eric wiseman
tom smuts
dave marglin
jon zittrain
john perry barlow
larry lessig
alex and wendy
myles berkman
fern and eric saltzman

we are here to talk about the future of the net.

my vision of the future of the net is the same as the vision i enunciated ten years ago.

cyberspace is an integrated media realm of stories told and shared by digitally connected and enabled hearts and minds.
WE are the Future of the Internet. We have good stories to live and to tell.
let us make our stories represent our values of
open code
open access
open talk
open education
let’s bridge the digital divide
let’s build the commons of the net

Common sense in common wealth
An equilibrium reached by men who had achieved personal liberty and saw the benefits of sharing in community
Framing a constitution to capture in words the very best of their intelligence expressing all that’s good in life in common without sacrificing their essential personal liberty
Freedom
Freedom with responsibility makes common sense

What do we human have in common
I say common sense

Imagine ourselves as free men and women who sit together to decide what is best for us in common

Common sense says we agree first and foremost that we will not give up what is most precious to us. liberty. At the least we can agree to maintain a presumption of liberty as we thrust ourselves forward into the developing thicket of statutory Law. Understand, we are gathering to create a government which will make statutes. Statutes are made by men for citizens to follow, not to lead. Can we agree then that as we go forward into the thicket of the statutes our government will generate in our future that we proceed with a presumption of liberty against arbitrary override by whim special interest reflected in exercise of legislative and executive power.

Let us articulate as best WE can this presumption in broad strokes of freedom of religion and speech and trial by jury drawn from among us, expressing our underlying commitment to liberty in our own fundamental rules here to be made. Let us leave a presumption of liberty to the future to stand as a beacon above all other presumptions our government may make after this one. This is our foundation and our goal, our original understanding and our polestar to wisdom in the future.

The essential constitutional role of the american jury is to preserve our liberty. To perform this function the jury must be informed of its function, its power, and its responsibility.

the judiciary quite rightly presumes reason and requires only rationality in legislative statutes which do not tread on explicitly articulated constitutional rights. to do otherwise would assert judicial prerogative into legislative sphere.

this means that the judiciary provides no check on legislative statutes which though rational lack wisdom yet are backed by special interest. such statutes intrude upon the liberty of citizens in a manner which the authority of judges does not check. the check for that abuse of citizen liberty in our constitutional system is trial by jury.

A JURY OF OUR PEERS
a jury of our peers was to have been our protection, the gateway through which legislative edict would have to march before taking a citizen’s liberty away.

from the vantage of the people, and the subset of us which is the jury in a criminal case, our trial system frames a question to us which we answer with our verdict. the indictment frames a question in terms of the violation of a statute.

what is the question to which we want an answer before we see a man’s liberty taken away

is it:
(a) did he violate a legislative statute
(b) did he do something covered by a legislative statute that is wrong
(c) did he do something wrong

balance is the essence of our constitutional ideal

a massachusetts referendum asserts the legality of possession of small amounts of marijuana
this is an assertion of legality
we the people are the keepers of our liberty
we the people decide whether the legalisms of the law intrude too deeply upon us

we need neither judges and nor legal training to tell us that our liberty is infringed by arbitrary law

this is not a judgment that requires legal education
all the logic of education is on the other side
on this side is the justice in our hearts

it requires our willingness to speak truth from the justice in our hearts

verdict – speak truth – guilty or not guilty