The Poker Project (playing and writing about poker in the U.S.)
02-17-2020
, 09:06 PM
Vegas Myths, Backgammon GOAT, The Great Affordability Crisis
I've been coming across some good gambling- and money-related stories.
The first, The People of Las Vegas, is a personal essay about "knowing" and writing about a hyper-mythologized place: insiders vs outsiders, locals vs tourists, authenticity vs illusion, deep divers vs parachute journalists. So much of the discussion reminds me of Nola-specific challenges. I suppose that the author's answer—get out and talk to people!—is so obvious that it's worth mentioning, again.
The second, The Chaos of the Dice, is an older profile of the GOAT backgammon player Falafel, who recently passed away. Lots of parallels with chess and poker subcultures. (The story led me to this insightful documentary .)
The Great Affordability Crisis is a statistics-driven piece about how, despite a strong economy, Americans are still financially strapped.
Glad you enjoyed, GG, and thanks for the link. I always enjoy me some Neil.
I've been coming across some good gambling- and money-related stories.
The first, The People of Las Vegas, is a personal essay about "knowing" and writing about a hyper-mythologized place: insiders vs outsiders, locals vs tourists, authenticity vs illusion, deep divers vs parachute journalists. So much of the discussion reminds me of Nola-specific challenges. I suppose that the author's answer—get out and talk to people!—is so obvious that it's worth mentioning, again.
Quote:
Las Vegas is a place about which people have ideas. They have thoughts and generalizations, takes and counter-takes, most of them detached from any genuine experience and uninformed by any concrete reality. This is true of many cities—New York, Paris, Prague in the 1990s—owing to books and movies and tourism bureaus, but it is particularly true of Las Vegas. It is a place that looms large in popular culture as a setting for blowout parties and high-stakes gambling, a place where one might wed a stripper with a heart of gold, like Ed Helms does in The Hangover, or hole up in a hotel room and drink oneself to death, as Nicolas Cage does in Leaving Las Vegas. Even those who would never go to Las Vegas are in the grip of its mythology. Yet roughly half of all Americans, or around 165 million people, have visited and one slivery weekend glimpse bestows on them a sense of ownership and authority.
Quote:
Backgammon is sometimes called the cruellest game. In 2008, during a snowy November outside Moscow, two strangers played on a board that one of them had carved in a labor camp. When the match ended, the winner got up, walked out of the room to get a knife, and then made good on their wager: “We had agreed to play backgammon—whoever loses dies,” he explained at the time of his arrest. He was drunk-seeming, and probably a psychopath, but the story has come to serve as a parable in extremis of fortunes lost and won over the board. People have made hundreds of thousands of dollars in single sessions; one expert player lost his home. Bruegel painted the game into his apocalyptic panorama “The Triumph of Death.”
Spoiler:
Quote:
Unlike chess, backgammon is tactile, fast-moving, even loud, with checkers slammed down and tiny dice sounding like rattlesnakes as they traverse the board. Casual players who believe that they are good persist in the illusion because the element of chance obscures their deficits. At its heart, backgammon’s cruelty resides in the dramatic volatility of the dice. Even a player who builds flawless structures on the board can lose to a novice. The good players simply win more often. As a result, backgammon is often played in marathon sessions that reward physical stamina, patience, and emotional equilibrium. One notable match lasted five days, with both players getting up only for bathroom breaks. The loser fell to the floor.
Quote:
Viewing the economy through a cost-of-living paradigm helps explain why roughly two in five American adults would struggle to come up with $400 in an emergency so many years after the Great Recession ended. It helps explain why one in five adults is unable to pay the current month’s bills in full. It demonstrates why a surprise furnace-repair bill, parking ticket, court fee, or medical expense remains ruinous for so many American families, despite all the wealth this country has generated. Fully one in three households is classified as “financially fragile.”
Last edited by bob_124; 02-17-2020 at 09:18 PM.
02-20-2020
, 12:43 PM
What is financial health? To me, it's life lived in the silence of a safety net. What a gift to not even consider the consequences of buying a $5 coffee, or to be free from the challenges of scraping money together for groceries, for this month's rent, for credit card bills, for child care payments, for gambling debts.
I finally saw Uncut Gems. I had heard wildly different reviews, but one constant is that people kept using the words "stressed" and "anxious" to describe their experience of the film. Overall, I liked it. I can see why some people thought it was a complete waste of time, as Sandler's character was largely unsympathetic and the movie could seem plotless. But to me, the chaos seemed well-organized, and I enjoyed how the movie was structured around the 200x NBA playoffs. More to the point: I can't relate to Sander's character at all—like, at all. Which makes me wonder how much of risk tolerance/aversion is learned, how much is innate, and how much we can take credit for any safety nets that we might have.
If Sandler's character is on the Action Junkie end of the spectrum, and GG is emperor of the Life Nits, then I'm certainly closer to GG than to Sandler. That said, I continue to find creative ways to incinerate money, including spending hundreds of dollars on glittery baubles to fling at intoxicated revelers
Spoiler:
Why I'm an Idiot
There are many reasons. But since we're on the subject of money management, I feel compelled to share this specific story.
Yesterday, in between teaching and gamb(o)ling, I popped into the public library to check out three books and return another—an Elif Batuman novel that's called, appropriately, The Idiot. At the counter was a frizzy-haired librarian with tattoos flecked across his arms and neck. I checked out the books, handed him the Batuman, and started walking away.
"Forgetting something?"
I turned around. He was holding open The Idiot in both palms, like a Bible. In its spine was a thin wad of hundos.
Oh.
I laughed sheepishly and grabbed the wad—it felt like a G, give or take—and then, grinning, he asked if we could split the money. I couldn't tell if the guy was joking, but his question made me wonder how much, if anything, I should give.
What's your play?
Last edited by bob_124; 02-20-2020 at 12:52 PM.
02-20-2020
, 01:11 PM
Quote:
I was recently thinking about this in relation to the question of what it means to be healthy. "Health," in the words of a dead French surgeon whose name I can't recall, "is life lived in the silence of the organs." In other words, we're at our healthiest when we don't think about health.
What is financial health? To me, it's life lived in the silence of a safety net. What a gift to not even consider the consequences of buying a $5 coffee, or to be free from the challenges of scraping money together for groceries, for this month's rent, for credit card bills, for child care payments, for gambling debts.
What is financial health? To me, it's life lived in the silence of a safety net. What a gift to not even consider the consequences of buying a $5 coffee, or to be free from the challenges of scraping money together for groceries, for this month's rent, for credit card bills, for child care payments, for gambling debts.
Will definitely not forget it from now on 
Also leaning towards the GG side of the spectrum, despite initially having put everything on the line as far as travelling broke for a full decade in my 20s and playing professionally for also a decade, go figure
But you learn to lower the ROR or the risk of life disaster as you age and gain wealth/see your health more vulnerable, I guess...100$ is what I leave.
02-20-2020
, 05:07 PM
02-20-2020
, 05:25 PM
Same here : I would not take it for the same reason, but would definitely offer 100$ (10%) of it. Now if I was back in my broke days, I am pretty sure I would of accepted the offer...
02-20-2020
, 05:38 PM
Hate to co-opt Bob's thread, but this reminded me of an incident at Talking Stick a couple of years ago. I was playing in the 5-10 SL HE game (rip) and lost a big pot so went to the cage to reload. I'm old school OMC so I keep my "day roll" in 5k rubber banded packets in my pocket. I walked back to the table and after a few minutes realized I was missing the rest of the packet I'd broken (about 4k left after rebuy).
Went back to the cage to look for it and a guy came up to me and said "I saw you drop some money, some guy picked it up and ran off". So I went to the floor and told him the story - he went to the cameras and identified the runner as a low level regular degen gambler in the room. Turned out the guy was then seen on the cameras at the sister casino "Casino Arizona" which offers only machines a couple of miles away. So they had security there grab him and I went down to (hopefully) get the money. According to security he did not want to give it up, saying something like "finders keepers"
They convinced him by saying "give it up or go to jail", asked if I wanted to press charges, I said no and got my 4k back. Of course if he had picked it up and handed to me when I dropped it I'd have given him at least 100. I asked the security if I could give him 100 as a consolation prize but they said it would not be appropriate. Tried to give the helpful floor a back chip but he said he couldn't take it. So no damage done other than feeling like a dumbass. Another time when when your wife says "how did it go" when you get home you say, "pretty good trip, nothing big happened"
Went back to the cage to look for it and a guy came up to me and said "I saw you drop some money, some guy picked it up and ran off". So I went to the floor and told him the story - he went to the cameras and identified the runner as a low level regular degen gambler in the room. Turned out the guy was then seen on the cameras at the sister casino "Casino Arizona" which offers only machines a couple of miles away. So they had security there grab him and I went down to (hopefully) get the money. According to security he did not want to give it up, saying something like "finders keepers"
They convinced him by saying "give it up or go to jail", asked if I wanted to press charges, I said no and got my 4k back. Of course if he had picked it up and handed to me when I dropped it I'd have given him at least 100. I asked the security if I could give him 100 as a consolation prize but they said it would not be appropriate. Tried to give the helpful floor a back chip but he said he couldn't take it. So no damage done other than feeling like a dumbass. Another time when when your wife says "how did it go" when you get home you say, "pretty good trip, nothing big happened"
02-23-2020
, 01:39 PM
Why I'm an Idiot (The Conclusion)
I peeled off a hundo and handed it to him. He was taken aback and said that he couldn't accept any money. "You could put it towards a good Mardi Gras costume," an eavesdropping librarian said encouragingly. Or was she joking? He hesitated. I hesitated.
"I'm walking away now," I said. "Thanks again."
I sat at a hightop in the corner and, once I thought that no one was looking, furtively counted the money. Seven hundos, minus the one I'd donated. How had it ended up in that book? At some point I must have separated it from the rest of my roll—but why or when, I didn't know.
Idiot, idiot, idiot.
After a minute or two of staring dumbly out the window, the frizzy-haired librarian appeared at my side. He put the hundo on the table and said that, really, really, he couldn't accept anything. "Not that I don't want it," he said. We shared an awkward laugh and then he was gone.
CHUMP CHANGE!
I think, after the initial confusion and joking around, neither of us knew what was appropriate. Props to him for doing what he felt what right, given the circumstances.
I feel like, if you gamb(o)le long enough, you'll have stories similar to ours. Seems tuff if not impossible to recount them to "regular" folks without them thinking you're a stone degen and/or balla.
I peeled off a hundo and handed it to him. He was taken aback and said that he couldn't accept any money. "You could put it towards a good Mardi Gras costume," an eavesdropping librarian said encouragingly. Or was she joking? He hesitated. I hesitated.
"I'm walking away now," I said. "Thanks again."
I sat at a hightop in the corner and, once I thought that no one was looking, furtively counted the money. Seven hundos, minus the one I'd donated. How had it ended up in that book? At some point I must have separated it from the rest of my roll—but why or when, I didn't know.
Idiot, idiot, idiot.
After a minute or two of staring dumbly out the window, the frizzy-haired librarian appeared at my side. He put the hundo on the table and said that, really, really, he couldn't accept anything. "Not that I don't want it," he said. We shared an awkward laugh and then he was gone.
Spoiler:
03-03-2020
, 07:36 PM
Three books, an article, and a podcast
Ted Conover's Rolling Nowhere has been on my list of books to read for a while, as an example of "immersion writing" or "literary journalism." The book follows a young Conover's journey into hobo or tramp culture as he hops train and describes the process of confusion, identity, and self-discovery. Early on he confronts the question: Why?
To these last two questions the answer is pretty clearly No. Tramp culture is ruff stuff.
Overall, I like the idea driving the book than the book itself. Most of Rolling Nowhere contains episodic portraits of rail stations, Western towns, and unsavory characters; there's no plot or character development aside from the author's own. That said, Conover writes with disarming honesty and admirable self-awareness, esp for a young twenty-something, and I plan to at least skim his book Newjack, which is about his immersion as a correctional officer in an upstate NY prison, along with this longform "sequel" to his first book, "Rolling Nowhere Part 2."
Next up was Neil Strauss's The Game, which I read in part because I've been thinking about what could be called "the gamification of society," and because I'd long ago reached a critical mass of zealots and hatas who mentioned that the book is worth reading. I had two impressions. The first is that the book starts strong, but Strauss loses stamina (as it were). The initial learning curve and hilarious vocabulary ("negging" being the most well-known) is gripping at first, but, like Rolling Nowhere, I grew bored with the book's repetitive style, as Strauss visit one seduction guru after another and plies his trade in nondescript bars with nondescript babes.
Second, the book feels false to me. Aside from one scene that's too ridiculous to be believed
I don't doubt, or care, that The Game is "true," in the sense that the stuff he describes literally happened (preempting this skepticism is a preface gleefully revealing that THE FOLLOWING IS A TRUE STORY. THIS REALLY HAPPENED.) What I mean is that Strauss bends a narrative and a resolution that feels contrived, manufactured, calculated, and eminently sellable. Which is impressive, in its own way. Whatever you think of Strauss and seduction culture, the dude is a talented writer and an even better salesman.
By far the best of the three books is Kiese Laymon's Heavy, a memoir about growing up overweight, black, and poor in Mississippi. Laymon's words are true in the same sense that Strauss's words are false. Here are some of my favorite sentences:
Towards the end of the book, there's a jarring chapter in which Laymon writes about gambling addiction.
The modicum of overeducated miscreants itt might appreciate The Adjunct Crisis: Serfs in Academe, higher ed's grotesque version of the American Pipe Dream.
Finally, I was listening to Sam Harris's conversation with Scott Galloway on the problem of wealth inequality, and found a number of things, especially this observation on our position within the global luckocracy, interesting:
Clearly, Harris just had his aces cracked.
Please forgive this poker-less poast. I realize that there's only one way to make amends
Ted Conover's Rolling Nowhere has been on my list of books to read for a while, as an example of "immersion writing" or "literary journalism." The book follows a young Conover's journey into hobo or tramp culture as he hops train and describes the process of confusion, identity, and self-discovery. Early on he confronts the question: Why?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ted Conover
Perhaps I came up with the idea of living with hobos because it looked like a way of escaping the limiting habits and attitudes of my own social class, of getting an outside perspective on who I was. Perhaps it was the challenge of seeing if my tender, college-bred self could make it in their tough world: did I have it in me? Or maybe it was simply through wondering what life for them was like: was it, as one sociologist suggested, "a world of strangers who are friends?" Was there a brotherhood of the rails?
Overall, I like the idea driving the book than the book itself. Most of Rolling Nowhere contains episodic portraits of rail stations, Western towns, and unsavory characters; there's no plot or character development aside from the author's own. That said, Conover writes with disarming honesty and admirable self-awareness, esp for a young twenty-something, and I plan to at least skim his book Newjack, which is about his immersion as a correctional officer in an upstate NY prison, along with this longform "sequel" to his first book, "Rolling Nowhere Part 2."
Next up was Neil Strauss's The Game, which I read in part because I've been thinking about what could be called "the gamification of society," and because I'd long ago reached a critical mass of zealots and hatas who mentioned that the book is worth reading. I had two impressions. The first is that the book starts strong, but Strauss loses stamina (as it were). The initial learning curve and hilarious vocabulary ("negging" being the most well-known) is gripping at first, but, like Rolling Nowhere, I grew bored with the book's repetitive style, as Strauss visit one seduction guru after another and plies his trade in nondescript bars with nondescript babes.
Second, the book feels false to me. Aside from one scene that's too ridiculous to be believed
Spoiler:
By far the best of the three books is Kiese Laymon's Heavy, a memoir about growing up overweight, black, and poor in Mississippi. Laymon's words are true in the same sense that Strauss's words are false. Here are some of my favorite sentences:
Quote:
That night, I went searching through all the garbage cans in my dorm looking for uneaten slices of pizza
Quote:
For the first time in my life, I realized telling the truth was way different from finding the truth, and finding the truth had everything to do with revisiting and rearranging words. Revisiting and rearranging words didn’t only require vocabulary; it required will, and maybe courage. Revised word patterns were revised thought patterns. Revised thought patterns shaped memory...The truth was that practicing writing meant practicing sitting down, sitting still, and my body did not ever want to be still.
Quote:
Every waking moment on that campus was filled with my trying to misdirect people from seeing who I really was. Misdirection was fun, but it was also exhausting
Quote:
I kept coming back to the casino because I felt emptier and heavier when I lost than when I won. I couldn’t win, because if I didn’t have enough to begin with, I could never win enough to stop. And if I won, I came back to win more. And if I came back to win more, I would eventually lose. And after I eventually lost, I would remember the thrill of winning. No matter what, I would always come back with the stated intention of winning, and the unstated intention of harming myself. Still, in a place where there were no metal detectors, where liquor was free, where money was being taken in mass quantities, and most people were losing, I wondered why there wasn’t more visible violence
Quote:
one of the reasons many adjuncts stay in poorly paid jobs is the dream of a position that would lead to tenure, and it is in the competition for such positions that the academic workplace may become distinctively terrible. “This is what faculty life looks like now,” Herb Childress writes in The Adjunct Underclass, “living in hope about the promises that are made to keep everyone quiet”—the whisper in an adjunct’s ear that “there may be a tenure-track line ahead.”
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sam Harris
Any talent a person can notice in themselves that’s the proximate cause of success--intelligence, or grit, or a desire to succeed--where is this coming from? No one invented themselves. You weren’t responsible for being given those gifts or for being born into a society that wasn’t plunged into a civil war on your fourth birthday. And your ability to make use of these opportunities, again, is coming from some set of causes that you didn’t author. This is not an argument against the necessity of effort. But a person’s ability to work hard is the product of genes and environment and, even if you’re going to smuggle an immortal soul into the clockwork, you didn’t pick your soul...It seems to me that the only moral position to have, recognizing the general shape of this things, which is that there’s a massive disparity between good and bad luck in this world, is that you should want to cancel the worst forms of that disparity and figure out: how can we make the floor get higher and higher for the least lucky among us?
Please forgive this poker-less poast. I realize that there's only one way to make amends
Spoiler:
03-28-2020
, 03:27 PM
Quote:
—Paul Auster, The Music of Chance
The Music of Chance was the last book that I read in 2019. Like the best poker-themed novels—King of a Small World and Shut up and Deal—it's less about poker than about how cardplaying affects the lives of its protagonists. The book is also strange. It's highly realistic and plot-driven, but it also resembles a parable, or even a waking nightmare.
After losing almost 20K in a high-stakes stud game, Nashe and his buddy Jackpot pay off their debt by working as manual laborers. The nature of the work—carting sixty-pound stones under the supervision of a groundskeeper who falls just short of being a prison guard—couldn't be more different from the freewheeling lifestyle that they both enjoyed. A fireman-turned-wanderer, Nashe aimlessly drives crosscountry until his inheritance runs out; Jackpot is a road gambler, a wannabe Doyle Brunson.
—Paul Auster, The Music of Chance
The Music of Chance was the last book that I read in 2019. Like the best poker-themed novels—King of a Small World and Shut up and Deal—it's less about poker than about how cardplaying affects the lives of its protagonists. The book is also strange. It's highly realistic and plot-driven, but it also resembles a parable, or even a waking nightmare.
After losing almost 20K in a high-stakes stud game, Nashe and his buddy Jackpot pay off their debt by working as manual laborers. The nature of the work—carting sixty-pound stones under the supervision of a groundskeeper who falls just short of being a prison guard—couldn't be more different from the freewheeling lifestyle that they both enjoyed. A fireman-turned-wanderer, Nashe aimlessly drives crosscountry until his inheritance runs out; Jackpot is a road gambler, a wannabe Doyle Brunson.
It went from "WTF!" when Nashe and friend show up at the house and the 2 eccentric show off their little precious rooms of collections, to, as you put it, an eerily like nightmare 
Part of me was "when was the last time that I read such an uncanny story...???". And then I remembered that French Canadian literature and Cinema is swarming with similar stories where the dark tune dictates the twisted plot that ensues... A bit like Realism Magic in Latino literature with stuff like Borges...Anyhow, I did enjoy how Nashe finds himself aimlessly riding his car initially, much like found in essays/stories on non-lieux (non-space...??? how is the concept called in English again...). Interesting story, to say the least. Will check out the movie soon
03-29-2020
, 11:31 AM
Quote:
Part of me was "when was the last time that I read such an uncanny story...???". And then I remembered that French Canadian literature and Cinema is swarming with similar stories where the dark tune dictates the twisted plot that ensues... A bit like Realism Magic in Latino literature with stuff like Borges...
Yeah, I had similar impressions about midway through the book. In terms of classification, The Music of Chance seems to be an example of "fantastic realism," a mixed genre in which strange, unsettling stuff happens within the conventions of realism. We don't *know* if the strange stuff is legit otherwordly/supernatural; maybe it's just uncanny coincidence or the product of a deranged narrator. Early seasons of the The X Files offer a good example of what I mean...along with Borges, some Henry James, and above all, for me, Kafka. Haven't read much French Canadian lit, but sounds like we're on the same page
03-29-2020
, 12:44 PM
March Recap
I'm putting an end to this ****er two days early, though I have little reason to believe that April will be better. Here's hoping...
This has certainly been a month for the ages. National and global news aside, I'll say that things in Nola are looking especially grim. Our combo of scarce resources and high poverty means that mortality rates will likely soar in the coming weeks. On the positive side, both the governor and the mayor have done a solid job imo. It's been interesting talking to friends who lived through Katrina, hearing them weigh one experience against the other. I feel strangely insulated from everything that's been happening. I'm living in a quiet corner of Uptown, right by the levee, and my days are filled with reading writing/running/dogwalking, with little reason or desire to visit other areas of town (part of me wants to bike through the shuttered French Quarter, but no, I don't think so). I recently listened to Floodlines, a new podcast about Katrina, and found it compelling, well-made, and perhaps relevant to our current moment.
With lots of open time and nothing to look forward to, I've been struggling to find the right balance of reflection, work, conversation, chilling, and obsessively descending into the abyss of social media. Which reminds me, I discovered a great new word:
DOOMSCROLLING! As in, "I was doomscrolling Twitter for almost three hours last night; I just couldn't help myself."
I have been trawling Twitter for about an hour/day, which is what it is; it's a great way to stay up to speed. I've also been writing and reading one Chekhov story every day (Is it possible to doomscroll Chekhov? I hope so). LOLive poker is, of course, off the table for the near future, but I haven't had much of an itch to play online or study. I've been more tired than usual at night, and so I've returned to the macabre comforts of Bojack Horseman as well as a YouTube feed that's littered (so to speak) with puppies, lions, and chess commentary. All that said, I've been following banter about the WSOP's cancellation and the online "mini-boom" in the form of poker clubs, etc. For those of you embracing the grind: hope the influx of recs treats you well.
I'll leave yall with a quote that I stole from a special episode of The Daily, "A Bit of Relief," as **** started hitting the fan. This is from C.S. Lewis's 1948 essay "On Living in an Atomic Age":
Respect it
Operation Deny Garick
[324/1200]
I'm putting an end to this ****er two days early, though I have little reason to believe that April will be better. Here's hoping...
This has certainly been a month for the ages. National and global news aside, I'll say that things in Nola are looking especially grim. Our combo of scarce resources and high poverty means that mortality rates will likely soar in the coming weeks. On the positive side, both the governor and the mayor have done a solid job imo. It's been interesting talking to friends who lived through Katrina, hearing them weigh one experience against the other. I feel strangely insulated from everything that's been happening. I'm living in a quiet corner of Uptown, right by the levee, and my days are filled with reading writing/running/dogwalking, with little reason or desire to visit other areas of town (part of me wants to bike through the shuttered French Quarter, but no, I don't think so). I recently listened to Floodlines, a new podcast about Katrina, and found it compelling, well-made, and perhaps relevant to our current moment.
With lots of open time and nothing to look forward to, I've been struggling to find the right balance of reflection, work, conversation, chilling, and obsessively descending into the abyss of social media. Which reminds me, I discovered a great new word:
DOOMSCROLLING! As in, "I was doomscrolling Twitter for almost three hours last night; I just couldn't help myself."
I have been trawling Twitter for about an hour/day, which is what it is; it's a great way to stay up to speed. I've also been writing and reading one Chekhov story every day (Is it possible to doomscroll Chekhov? I hope so). LOLive poker is, of course, off the table for the near future, but I haven't had much of an itch to play online or study. I've been more tired than usual at night, and so I've returned to the macabre comforts of Bojack Horseman as well as a YouTube feed that's littered (so to speak) with puppies, lions, and chess commentary. All that said, I've been following banter about the WSOP's cancellation and the online "mini-boom" in the form of poker clubs, etc. For those of you embracing the grind: hope the influx of recs treats you well.
I'll leave yall with a quote that I stole from a special episode of The Daily, "A Bit of Relief," as **** started hitting the fan. This is from C.S. Lewis's 1948 essay "On Living in an Atomic Age":
Quote:
Originally Posted by NarniaWhut
In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. “How are we to live in an atomic age?” I am tempted to reply: “Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.”
In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors—anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.
This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.
In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors—anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.
This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.
Spoiler:
Operation Deny Garick
[324/1200]
03-30-2020
, 05:29 PM
Olivier Busquet's latest podcast (episode 5) has The Grid's host to speak of a book, Scarcity. I am sure you will enjoy it Ben
Random question : do folks publicly speak French in the French Quarter, or just at home? I definitely need to visit NOLA soon...
Random question : do folks publicly speak French in the French Quarter, or just at home? I definitely need to visit NOLA soon...
04-03-2020
, 06:33 PM
Poker Faces in the Crowd: Mardi Gras Clown
You can read my April 2+2 Magazine piece, Mardi Gras Clown, here.
Skimming over the story now, it's incredible how far removed Mardi Gras feels to me. March was a long month.
Thanks, Dubn, I recently listened to livb's latest pod (and have heard them all, I think). Jen is a great ambassador for both poker and chess, imo. Have you listened to The Grid? Seems like a neat concept for a pod.
These days, the FQ is mainly French in name only. Nola changed rule a few times during the 1700/1800s (French-Spanish-French-US) so the name is more of a relic from those early days. If you stroll through the streets (which you should) you'll mainly come across hordes of tourists, though I'm sure you could find a few French-speaking locals, with some effort.
Quote:
The tourist crossed his arms. You could tell that he was struggling to decide whether this raccoon-eyed beak-wearing clowned-up miscreant was telling the truth, or whether the story was some kind of hustle.
Skimming over the story now, it's incredible how far removed Mardi Gras feels to me. March was a long month.
These days, the FQ is mainly French in name only. Nola changed rule a few times during the 1700/1800s (French-Spanish-French-US) so the name is more of a relic from those early days. If you stroll through the streets (which you should) you'll mainly come across hordes of tourists, though I'm sure you could find a few French-speaking locals, with some effort.