Letter Never Sent

I’m ambivalent about gambling maybe due to my Southern Baptist roots. On the one hand, it’s occasionally fun to go to a casino and lose a lot of money and feel stupid about it. On the other hand, plenty of people have the fun and lose the money, but somehow forget the discomfort of losing hard-earned money long enough to become repeat losers customers.

If you talk to the locals in places like Shreveport, they’re quick to tell you that casino gambling is a net drain on the economy. With the exception of a few select businesses in close proximity to the casinos, it has to be an economic wash. Sure, you have the good middle-income jobs as dealers and pit bosses, but otherwise most of the money made by casinos in places like Shreveport heads right back out to New York City, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles. Very little money is left to spend in the wider local economy. Wherever there is gambling, you almost certainly do not want to live there. It saps the vitality and spirit of a place, because easy-come winnings walk hand in hand with easy-go misery. There is no way to make everyone a winner. That is the lie of gambling. If you’re wealthy, loss is the cost of doing business, if you’re poor, loss can cripple you.

The gambling industry shows it’s true colors in situations like the one described in the following article: US arrest threat to gambling executives. It describes how Lousiana police at the behest of pro-gambling politicians are trying to get Internet gambling operations to stop taking bets from users in Louisiana by threatening to issue warrants for Internet gambling executives that can be served anywhere in the United States.

Louisiana police have warned all online gambling companies to stop accepting bets in the state or risk having their executives and directors arrested if they visit the US.

The police official responsible for the arrest of Peter Dicks, former chairman of Sportingbet, on a Louisiana warrant in New York three weeks ago, said the state was pressing ahead with its clampdown, in spite of what appears to be a rethink about the case at higher political levels.

Why should Louisiana care about Internet gambling when gambling is legal in that state? Quite simply, it’s an old school turf war. The brick and mortar casinos are using their corrupt influence within Louisiana politics to put the hurt on their low-cost, efficient competitors. The state also wants to make sure they get a taste (taxes) of any gambling that goes on within their borders.

In spite of my libertarian leanings, I think gambling is essentially a scam that needs to be closely controlled. And worse, it’s a scam that perpetuates and celebrates the ethos of scamming. Casinos are selling false hopes and dreams (scam #1) and casino visitors are hungry to consume this delusion for the possibility of gain without sacrifice (scam #2), or just for relief from pain. I doubt much good can ever come from gambling, despite its cross-dressing as wholesome family entertainment.

A few weekends ago, I spent hours watching music videos on YouTube. Honestly, without a user-driven site like YouTube you would never see some of these videos in the wild. Especially girl groups like FuzzBox (We’ve got a Fuzzbox and we’re gonna use it), which I was unfamiliar with and found interesting from a cultural history perspective.

I like YouTube, but you have to wade through a ton of narcissistic teenage camwh*ring to get to the good stuff. Video sharing sites are irresistable to teenage human peacocks.

I found this video, which I really like for two reasons. Number one, it’s a great song by a great band from the 1980’s. Number two, the background video to the song uses nature film footage as well as whimsical animation techniques. Bon appetit!
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This past weekend, Jody and I went to see the Hatshepsut exhibit at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth. It’s called: Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh. Apparently, Hatshepsut (Say that five times fast) was regent for her son, but she later upgraded to full pharaoh. This was around 1500 BC, which is really only about 140 human generations ago. The older I get, the more a millenium seems rather short.

The exhibit was pretty interesting, although I found myself thinking more about “culture” and “history” as a business rather than enjoying the priceless antiquities. The exhibit was incredibly crowded. The tickets were around $15 a piece mainly for the privilege of admiring baubles looted from the crypts of long-since departed Egyptians. Most of the non-statuary exhibits were comprised of jewelry and amulets worn by the dead, although there were also many small containers used to store eye makeup and various balms. Things any normal, respectable Egyptian would need for their one-way trip to the afterlife. The commonplace nature of most of the stuff was striking. Human beings have not changed at all in 3500 years. For example, there was whip handle (kinda like this) given to some overseer with an inscription of praise for a job well done. It reminded me of the plastic plaudits most large corporations award in lieu of bonuses: “This whip handle awarded to Amon, the Harvest Manager of Senemut, for bringing in the barley harvest under budget and ahead of schedule.” Something about this is depressing, although I think the Egyptians had a really boring culture judging from the stuff they left behind. Much like the Babylonians, most of their residue is rather uninspiring, with the exception of the pyramids, sculpture, and palaces. Did the Egyptians have a Plato or a Socrates? Maybe they did and that’s the kind of stuff that was destroyed when those idiots razed the Library of Alexandria.

One of the other things I really enjoyed was a game set in a small wooden box meant to be buried with its owner, obviously a lover of games. It reminded me of how we buried my grandmother with a deck of playing cards when she died, because playing games like Shanghai Rummy and Hand and Foot was one of the things she loved doing most with her friends and family.

If you have a chance, spend some a little while gawking at these old dead and their junk. It will make you glad that you’re still alive in your little place and time.

It seems like most Americans are ill-equipped to deal with the vagaries of real estate. This does not bode well considering the high cost of an investment that can run several hundred thousands of dollars. From the NY Times: It Seemed Like a Good Bet at the Time:

One such owner, who requested anonymity rather than risk the embarrassment of exposing a financial blunder, bought a house in Port St. Lucie, Fla., as an investment in April of last year and financed the $410,000 purchase with an ARM, with an introductory rate of nearly 7 percent. The loan was an afterthought, since he expected to sell the house almost immediately for a profit. He didn’t, and now the developer recently sold a similar house in the neighborhood for $325,000.

“I just didn’t know what I was doing, and I shouldn’t have done it,” said the man, who does not have enough equity in the house to refinance and who will run out of money to pay the mortgage in 10 months. “Maybe the Lord will send a miracle.”

Presumably, the best time to buy real estate is when everyone else is losing their shirts, not when everyone is talking about all the quick money to be had. With houses as with stocks, buy when everyone else is selling, sell when everyone else is buying.

The Holy Grail of Synchronization: How to synchronize Microsoft Outlook (multiple locations), Google Calendar, Gmail, iPod, and mobile phone with Funambol / ScheduleWorld.

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David Attenborough’s nature videos are amazing, especially the Life of Birds. I learned so much from that series, like about the hummingbirds in the Andes who actually hibernate during cold periods to conserve energy. I think about this every time I see hummingbirds. This clip is about the various species of bird of paradise in Papua New Guinea.

Other David Attenborough classics from YouTube: hermaphroditic Leopard slugs mating while suspended by a twisted rope of their own comingled slug mucus,  superb male Lyrebird audio mimicry (camera shutters, car alarms, chainsaws) in order to attract a female to admire his plumage, Capercaille mating display, brachiating Gibbons in the forests of Borneo, scary bat-hunting centipede, red Christmas Island crabs spawning by the millions.