You're on the button and you peek at your cards. You've got pocket rockets (i.e. two aces). A player in an early position two-bets, and you're trying to decide whether to slow play and raise the turn or to three-bet pre-flop.

After the first round of betting, players have a general idea (or at least a guess) of which players have the strong hands. Now it's time to deal some more cards. The strategies get more complex. A player bets a large stack. Does this player have a flush, or is he trying to "buy the pot" by scaring the other players away? You have four hearts, one of which is the ace. You remember all the previous moves this player made to try to get an idea of his playing style. You think he's bluffing. You call. Now the game becomes about probability. You have four hearts, including the ace, which means that if one more heart comes down, you win. With two cards to go, that means you have a 39 percent chance of getting a flush, plus you have your aces to fall back on if he bluffs, and there are enough chips in the pot to justify staying in. [Read article]

Fraternity rush, the archetype of superficiality and bad taste that consumes nearly 15 percent of our student body, is upon us. Rush is also the treasured time in a man's life where he's judged strictly by the numbers - he can drink 12 beers, score 25 points and pick up three girls in a night, and could bench press 220 pounds in high school.

To the greek system, numbers mean something. Their manipulation makes up a scale on which to determine a student's proper placement among the campus elite. [Read article]

'White beauty' isn't a goal for all women

I'm writing in response to the sociology study done by Professor Louise Roth and graduate student Rachael Neal that wrongly "confirms" that women, regardless of ethnicity, feel the need to conform to the "white standard" of beauty.

I find it hard to believe that a sample size as small as 100 women and limited to a college campus is enough to "confirm" that American women feel the need to conform to a white standard of beauty. [Read article]