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November 14

Question about cultural reference in "Dude, Where's My Ranch?"

Hi there. In The Simpsons' episode 14x18 - "Dude, Where's My Ranch?" - Homer haggles with the chieftain of a Native American tribe about the amount of blackjack packs they should use in the Casino they are willing to build. Unfortunately, I have to idea why that's supposed to be funny since I don't get the cultural reference. Can someone explain it to me? Regards So Why 14:29, 14 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It's to do with card counting: the fewer the decks the better for the card-counter (not because it's easier to remember, because card counting doesn't involve actually memorising cards, but because the probability can become more highly skewed more easily if there is a smaller number of cards; if there was an infinite number of cards then card-counting would give you no insight into future probabilities). The article "card counting" doesn't properly explain the effect of the number of decks, but it does mention that increasing the number of decks has been used to combat card counters. --Colapeninsula (talk) 15:58, 14 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Service that notifies you when an album by one of your bands comes out?

Is there any sort of online service where you can put in a list of your favorite music artists or groups, and then it notifies you when an album by one of them comes out? (What would also be nice: notification if they're having a concert in your area). Thanks. Ab e g92contribs 14:45, 14 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Songbird offers both those things as plugins, based on your library. As for concerts, it uses songkick.com which you can also use without Songbird. Unfortunately, it seems to use MusicBrainz for the new releases database which does not offer the same feature without it. Regards So Why 15:49, 14 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

role playing ga,mes

Are there any guides (books preferably)for designing/making role playing games (rpgs)Heck froze over (talk) 03:24, 15 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Tabletop or video game? Googling "making your own RPG" gives a lot of results either way, and Amazon has a few books on programming them[1], as well as some software[2][3]. --Colapeninsula (talk) 09:35, 15 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ok. Preferably for tabletop types(i can find ones on programming at my library) though I would think there would be elements common to both styles. I actually meant more for the game design/mechanics. Heck froze over (talk) 18:07, 15 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Baseball postseason number of games

If my math is correct, there can be anywhere from 24 to 41 postseason MLB games. What is the average number of postseason games per year over, say, the last 20 or so years? Comet Tuttle (talk) 20:28, 14 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You're right, the minimum possible is 24 and the maximum possible is 41, i.e. all sweeps vs. all series going the distance. You should go back only as far as 1995, the first year that the playoffs went from 4 teams to 8 teams. Then take a look at the year-by-year results since then,[4] and you can do that additional math. :) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:35, 14 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note that the number of teams in the playoffs might go up to 10 - and thus, the number of games might go up as well. See [5], for example. UltraExactZZ ^Said~ Did 21:03, 17 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, they're talking about a 1-game play-in between the wild cards. That would bump the possible postseason games to 26 and 43 respectively, starting in 2013. So the time period covered by Comet's question will be from 1995 through 2012. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:49, 20 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Disbanding the NBA players' association

The National Basketball Association's Players' Association has announced that they have rejected the league's final offer in their labor dispute, and are saying they are going to disband the union as a result. What purpose does disbanding the union accomplish? The Mark of the Beast (talk) 21:31, 14 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It's called "decertification". The reason is that members of a union cannot sue their employers during negotiations; contract negotiations are supposed to be in good faith, and preventing parties for these negotiations from filing lawsuits is seen as a means of encouraging face-to-face negotiations to proceed. The purpose of decertification is to allow the members of the union to file suit in a court of law against the NBA owners. The NFLPA (National Football League Players Association) has used this tactic twice during work stoppages, in 1987 and again in 2011. See 2011 NFL lockout for the most recent example, Wikipedia's info on the 1987 NFL strike is pretty scant; the NFLPA didn't actually recertify after that one for 6 years, meaning that from 1987-1993, the players didn't have a union, but it did allow them to file an antitrust lawsuit against the NFL and ultimately forced the NFL owners to agree to the major terms of the 1987 strike; the 1993 CBA was in force for 18 years, the longest period in any of the 4 major sports without a major work stoppage. The 2011 NFLPA decertification was much shorter, players were without an official union for only about 4 1/2 months. The NBAPA is hoping for similar results, though I must say the world today is a very different place than 20 years ago, and the issues facing the 2011 NBA players are different than the 1987 NFL players. --Jayron32 22:42, 14 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Great, thanks for the explanation. The Mark of the Beast (talk) 22:47, 14 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

List of video game magazines?

Does anyone here possibly know where I could find a list of video gaming magazines that are currently in print? I saw something like what I'm looking for on Wikipedia before, can't seem to find it now. — Preceding unsigned comment added by CHRISTIANgamer97 (talk • contribs) 23:34, 14 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe you saw Category:Video game magazines? Staecker (talk) 23:43, 14 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]