This spring, during the COVID lockdown, I started playing poker. Low stakes Texas Hold’em. I wanted to keep my mind active, and I was sick of watching Bosch. That guy is a grouch.
So I took up online gambling.
To many of you, I’m sure this sounds like a terrible decision, but I wasn’t alone. Online poker is legal in New Jersey, and the poker sites experienced a lot of extra traffic during the pandemic. This was great for the regulars, the grinders. Easy money. Online poker is tough. There are quite a few seasoned veterans out there, so you’ve got to know what you’re doing. I was lucky not to lose my entire (albeit tiny) bankroll in the first few weeks.
At the start, I thought this was something relaxing and fun I could do in the evening while drinking a few beers, something to pass the time.
If you’re serious about learning to play poker, that’s not how it goes. Instead of cracking an IPA, you’re better off brewing a pot of coffee. This is NOT passive entertainment.
I also found that I enjoyed reading books about poker just as much (or possibly more) than I enjoyed playing poker. These books taught me to think poker. How to assess risk and reward. Compute pot odds. Analyze your position. Bet for value. Read hand combinations. How to control your emotions, and avoid tilting into madness.
And while I might sound like a reprobate, I also learned that you should encourage your kids to gamble. Placing an intelligent wager involves so many necessary skills that children need to hone — especially teenage children — that you’ve got to let them try, even if the populace calls you a corrupt degenerate.
That’s what the populace called Socrates.
If you are going to teach your kids to gamble, teach them poker. I’m sure there are valuable administrative lessons to be learned from managing a fantasy football team and rolling the bones can school you in basic probability (Roland “Prez” Pryzbylewski taught us this in The Wire). Still, none of these games require the philosophical and strategic thinking you need while playing poker, Texas Hold’em in particular.
If my son had utilized some poker logic on his epic adventure, maybe he wouldn’t have ended up cleaning all the bathrooms in our house. It’s not like I hadn’t taught him.
If Woody had gone straight to the police . . .
Before my online poker experience, I thought I was a decent poker player. I’m good at math, I like probability and statistics, and I’ve always done well when I’ve played with friends. But playing countless hands online and reading a slew of classic poker books has shown me the many, many holes in my game. Flaws in my logic and thinking. Spontaneously stupid reactions.
I get overly competitive. I make rash decisions. I’m too curious. I’m either too passive or I’m too aggressive. I play too many hands. My bet-sizing is often imprecise. I bet too much. I check too much. I call too much. I don’t bet the river enough. I could go on and on. The best way to improve at poker is through brutal self-reflection. If you don’t analyze your mistakes and play better, you will lose your money. The scoreboard is your ever-fluctuating bankroll.
Some people learn to play poker through repetition, playing countless hands for decades. This works, but it’s arduous and expensive. Some people use videos. There’s a plenitude of resources on YouTube if you’re willing to wade through them. Some people pay serious money to get coached. But I’m a high school English teacher, and so I turned to my old standby: books. I read quite a few. Due to COVID-19, there was nothing but time.
Some poker books are mathematical and tactical . . . works by David Sklansky, Dan Harrington, and Ed Miller. Some are more evocative. British poet Al Alvarez’s The Biggest Game in Town is regarded as the best book about poker ever written. It’s stylish and authentic. But it won’t help your game. Tommy Angelo and Phil Gordon are more philosophical and meditative. Gus Hansen’s bestseller Every Hand Revealed is candid and fun, in a goofy sort of way. Lots of exclamation points. In The Noble Hustle: Poker, Beef Jerky, and Death, Colson Whitehead comes across as an existential grumbler. If you want ambiguity, read the essays in Full Tilt Poker. Every author has a different methodology.
The takeaway from the literature is this: poker is an entire branch of knowledge. It incorporates psychology, game theory, statistics, probability, economics, risk assessment, and character analysis. It can get really deep. If you want to hear how deep, listen to an episode of the podcast Just Hands. Jackson Laskey and James Bilderbeck dissect one hand per episode. Thirty minutes to an hour of “nebulous thoughts” on poker strategy and decision-making. They slow downtime, which is the basis of philosophical thinking.
In the moment, whether we are playing poker or living our life, we use heuristics — rules of thumb — to make our choices. We don’t have enough time to deeply analyze every decision. But if we had the time, any moment can get sticky. My point is — whether in cards or life — there’s no formula. It’s more than simply looking at your hand and throwing down a bet.
Like many of you, I was doing a lot of parenting during the pandemic. Certainly more parenting than poker. We all learned that when schools and sports and trampoline gyms are shut down, you’ve got to up your parenting game. There’s no formula on how to do that either.
I tried to encourage my two high school boys to stay active, in mind and body. To finish their remote school work. To read something other than memes and texts on their phones.
My younger son — a shy and reticent freshman who hadn’t hit puberty yet — was unfazed by the pandemic. He got his school work done, played video games and Magic and Dungeons & Dragons online with his friends, and enjoyed sleeping in. Though he was annoyed that tennis season was canceled, he was happy enough to play with me. We found some courts that didn’t close and played nearly every day. Sometimes he wandered around town with his nerdy friend Martin, but he was happy enough watching shows like Big Shrimpin’ and Silicon Valley with the family
He wasn’t worried about missing keg parties or flirting with girls.
My older son, a sophomore, was a different story. He was so angry about losing tennis season that he didn’t want to play with us. It reminded him of all the good times he was missing with his friends on the team. He recently grew seven inches (shooting past my wife and me) and he had something of a social life before the pandemic: he had a girlfriend for most of winter track season, he went to a house party and drank too much alcoholic punch (and consequently spent the night puking) and he was president of the Rocket Propulsion Club.
He was a real teenager.
While he tolerated us (we played a lot of Bananagrams) this wasn’t enough action for a sixteen-year-old man-child. And where there is action — trouble and risk — poker logic is crucial. Right?
This is always the question with an analogy. Does it hold water?
Is poker just a game, or does it have some bearing on reality?
Do pinochle and Parcheesi teach you essential life skills or are they simply ways to idle away the time? How about chess? Is football similar to modern warfare? Is hockey similar to anything?
In The Catcher in the Rye, Mr. Spencer — Holden Caulfield’s history teacher — tells Holden that “life is a game” that one plays “according to the rules.”
Holden disagrees.
“Game my ass. Some game. If you get on the side where all the hot-shots are, then it’s a game, all right — I’ll admit that. But if you get on the other side, where there aren’t any hot-shots, what’s a game about it? Nothing. No game.”
I empathize with Holden. Not all analogies hold up. But I’d like to make the case that poker does. Especially Texas Hold’em.
Here’s a quick primer, in case you need convincing.
Old-time poker champion Doyle Brunson called no limit “the Cadillac of poker” for a reason. There’s more on the line, more ways to play, more variation in style, and — because of the “no limit” element — it hasn’t been solved by computers. It’s a miracle of limited, but significant information.
Just like life.
Here’s how it goes. First off, everyone gets two cards, face down. These are your “hole” cards. You see them, no one else does. If you like these cards, you have the option to bet on your hand: invest in it right off the bat. You also have the option to “check” to someone else’s bet — essentially match the bet so you can continue playing. You could also brazenly raise the bet. Or you could do the opposite. You could fold. Quit the hand, before anything wild happens. This decision is yours alone.
That’s the miracle of poker. You can quit before the game even starts. Opt-out. The best poker players are the best quitters. It’s the biggest part of the game. This may sound odd, to those of you who frown upon quitting, but getting out when the getting out is good is a real skill.
We often tell children “quitters never win,” but there are many advantages to quitting that are often not promoted. The Freakonomics episode “The Upside of Quitting” explores this theme.
Now, if you’re sitting at the table, you can’t completely avoid betting. Twice per round, you are forced to bet a little bit. These are the antes. The small blind and the big blind. Otherwise, there would be no risk at all to play and you could wait forever for a pair of aces. The blinds ensure that if you don’t eventually play, you will lose all your money. You’ll be blinded out. So if you are at the table, there’s always some risk. But you can leave if you like. This isn’t Russian roulette with Robert Deniro and Christopher Walken in a Vietcong prison camp. You can always walk away from the table.
After the initial round of betting on your two hole cards, then the dealer “flops” out three shared cards. Everyone can see these. So you’ve got shared information and private information. You weigh this and decide if you want to bet, check, raise, or fold. The way the other people bet, check, raise and fold reveals information about their hands. This could be accurate information or they could be bluffing, representing cards they don’t have. You have to decide. Be careful of peer pressure, you don’t want to bet just because everyone does. You need to like your hand, at least a little bit.
Another card is turned. This card is called “the turn” because it can turn the tide of the hand. There is more betting. You can still quit! Although, mentally it gets harder to quit once you’ve come this far because you’ve put some of your hard-earned money into the pot. You want that money back, but it’s not yours any longer. It’s up for grabs. It’s hard to accept. We’ll get more into this logical fallacy later. But remember, the best poker players are the best quitters.
At any time during this process, in “no limit” Texas Hold’em, a player can bet all their money. The nuclear option. Most poker does not operate like this. There is a limit to how much you can bet. It makes it easier to compute the odds of winning the hand, versus the percentage of the money you need to bet. This “all-in” option in Texas Hold’em is what makes the game so indeterminate.
You may be able to figure out the percentages of drawing a flush, but can you figure out the percentages of the human mind? You may be able to imagine what a rational being would bet, but what about the lunatic on your right? How about the genius on your left? Is that a regular guy with a good hand, a super-genius utilizing combinatorial game theory, or a spoiled dilettante with a giant trust fund?
There’s no way to know for sure.
After the turn, one more card is revealed, for a total of five shared cards. This card is called “the river” or “fifth street.” This is the card that can make your hand. Or you can fall off the cliff, into the river and be swept away. Sold down the river. It’s an apt metaphor for this essay.
Now there are five community cards and two private cards. You choose the best five of the seven to make your hand.
The best hand wins the pot. I won’t get into what beats what . . . if you don’t know that a full house beats a straight, then I’d like to invite you to a Tuesday night Zoom poker game.
Now let’s extend the analogy in a general way. For many people, life during the pandemic was similar to playing poker.
Most of us were making calculated bets all the time. Getting together with friends in the backyard? A small bet. Outdoor seating at a restaurant? Maybe a little bigger. Playing tennis? Marching in a protest? Visiting a crowded beach? Reopening school? Who knows? All different amounts of risk and reward. Different amounts of pleasure, different amounts of action and excitement and different risks of contracting COVID.
Of course, there were old people and immune-compromised people who had to sit the game out. Some essential workers were forced to put their immune systems on the line for eight hours every day. For these people, the pandemic was not a game.
But for many of us, it was. Getting plastered in a crowded Miami bar turned out to be an all-in bet. The nuclear option. Big fun, but it’s also the highest risk to get the virus.
You could always fold your hand. If the party got too crowded, you could leave. Opt-out. If there were hordes of people inside Costco, you could come back some other time. Play another day.
My kids were playing some pandemic poker.
My younger son was playing it pretty close to the vest. Lots of online stuff. Sometimes he’d go out walking or play some tennis. Small bets.
My older son was running every day with a couple of friends. He was going over to Rutgers with his buddies and doing Rocket Propulsion stuff. He was playing video games in his friend’s backyard. Also smallish bets.
But like I said, my older son Alex was a real teenager. Half man, half child. He needed more action than that.
On a hot day in June, he went over to a friend’s house, ostensibly to play Spikeball. Thunderstorms were in the forecast. The lockdown had been going forever. No school, no organized sports, no graduation parties, no hanging out in an air-conditioned house with friends.
Around noon, Alex called and told me the two older boys — seniors — had decided to bike to Princeton. Alex was going as well. They were going to take the towpath (a.k.a. D & R Canal State Park) from New Brunswick to Rocky Hill and then bike into Princeton proper and eat lunch. It’s a long way there. Twenty-five miles. And then you’ve got to get back . . .
I told him this wasn’t a great idea and listed the reasons:It was too late in the day.
It was hot.
The forecast called for thunderstorms.
He wasn’t wearing spandex bike shorts . . . he would chafe.
He was using his younger brother’s bike, which was too small for him.
Essentially, I was explaining that this was not a great hand. Sometimes, you’ve got to be patient and wait for another.
Pete Townsend explains this in the song “It’s Hard.”
Anyone can do anything if they hold the right card.
So, I’m thinking about my life now . . .
I’m thinking very hard.
Deal me another hand, Lord, this one’s very hard.
I didn’t tell him he couldn’t go. I just clearly laid out the problems. I assumed he was bluffing. This is one of the holes in my poker game. I often think people are bluffing, pretending that their awful hand is good. I assume they will come to their senses soon enough. I want to see what happens because I think I know more than they do.
This kind of curiosity is costly.
Most of the time, people are sincere about their bets. Bluffing is counter-intuitive and feels wrong. People generally believe their hand is good enough, even if their hand is bad. They just think it’s better than it is.
My wife asked, “Did you tell him he could go?”
“I’m not sure. I think he’s going. I just told him it wasn’t a great idea.”
My wife shook her head. She hates my wishy-washy parenting. But there’s no rule book for these situations.
I should point out: this is a kid who never bikes anywhere. God knows why, but he’s opposed to biking. He likes to ride his skateboard. He borrowed his younger brother’s mountain bike for this adventure, which was too small for him. So I assumed he’d be turning back sooner rather than later.
I should have considered his company. Alex was a sophomore, and he was going on this adventure with two athletic seniors. Guys about to graduate, guys ready to leave home and go to college. Guys with a bigger bankroll than my son. There might be some peer pressure to not fold.
When Kenny Rogers sang “You got to know when to hold’em, know when to fold’em” he skipped all the psychology. You’re not playing in a vacuum. There’s pressure not to fold them! Your friends never want you to fold them. They want to see some action. Especially some action with your money. Vicarious action.
I told Alex he could turn around at any time. He was NOT all in. I would put the bike rack on the van and pick him up anywhere along the route. No problem. I would give his friends a lift as well, if they wanted to bail. I could fit all three bikes on the rack.
I figured at some point on this ride — or perhaps even before they set off — he would fold his hand. It was a bad hand, for the reasons I listed above. But I wanted him to figure that out.
Alex told me that they packed some food and plenty of water and some rain gear.
Helmet?
No helmet.
The Delaware and Raritan Canal State Park Trail is a flat path that lies between the Raritan River and the canal. It is all called the tow road because mules used to tow barges and canal boats up and down it. The canal is just a foot or two below the level of the path, but there are often cliffs down to the river. It’s not dangerous in the daytime — the path is well kept. There are occasional ruts and roots, and plenty of poison ivy on the sides of the path, but no terrain that warrants a helmet.
The no-helmet-bet is one worth making on this kind of trail. The chance you’re going to fall and crack your skull is minuscule. The pleasure of the wind in your hair is definite. And it was hot.
When’s the last time you fell while riding a bike on a straight path?
At the start of their trip, luck was on their side. They got a good flop. They made the long haul to Princeton without mishap, and the storms didn’t hit until they got into town. They grabbed some lunch, waited out the rain under an awning, and then decided to take the bus home.
They were giving up on the turn, and that was fine. Typical of so many poker hands. You open with a big bet, continue to bet on the flop, and then take stock of the situation and decide to fold. Quit before things get too intense. They could do the entire fifty-mile there-and-back-trip some other time.
My wife and I were happy with this decision, it was getting late and we figured we were going to have to drive to Princeton to give Alex a ride home. The bus was a great call. Saved us a trip in the car. The bus was supposed to leave at 6:15 PM.
I texted Alex at 6:20 PM to see if he had caught the bus. No answer. Twenty minutes later, I got a text. They missed the bus. They had decided to bike home. I called him and told him he wasn’t going to make it before dark. He insisted they would make it. If not, he said, they would get off the towpath and ride on the road. He said that his friends had flashlights. Alex did not have a flashlight, nor did he have a light on his bike.
He also wasn’t wearing a helmet, so we didn’t want him to ride on the road in the dark. We told him once it got dark, that we wanted him to stop riding the tow road — regardless of what his older friends were doing. He agreed to this. A couple of hours later, it got dark. We got in touch with him. Alex said they were near Manville — about ten miles from home — and we instructed him to get off the tow road at the nearest exit. There was a D&R Canal Trail parking lot right in Manville. We hoped to find him there. We headed west in the minivan, traveling parallel to the canal.
This where poker becomes a psychological game. Logically, he should have backed out. Folded. He had put a lot of time and effort in, it was a lot of fun, but it was over. Pitch black and he was riding along a river. But many people — including myself — often have trouble leaving an interesting hand. You’ve invested so much. People throw good money after bad. Alex decided to go all-in on the river. This was a bet we didn’t want him to make, but circumstances pressured him into it. This happens sometimes. You should know when to fold’em, but when no one else is folding their hand, sometimes your last card doesn’t matter. You blindly bet the last card because you are married to the bet. You can’t back out . . . even though you can. How could he leave these two senior boys? They were pot-committed into biking from Highland Park to Princeton and back, and they were going all-in. Alex told us they discussed the risks and rewards of this play. He knew he was going to get grounded, but wanted to make the entire trip. This is what separates the best players from the good players. They can back out of a hand even when they’ve invested a great deal of time and energy into it. Alex knew the right thing to do but still couldn’t bring himself to do it.
So my wife drove the van, while I navigated a route as close to the river as possible. I texted Alex. No answer. And he didn’t have his phone location on. We lost touch with him. He wasn’t at the Manville parking lot, so we started driving around, finding places where the canal path intersected with the road. I could see the path through the trees, and occasionally make out the silhouettes of fishermen or hikers. No group of kids on bikes, though. It was getting darker and darker.
We were hoping to stumble on him at one of the bridges or park entrances, but no such luck.
My wife and I both certainly had some grim thoughts running through our heads. While the path was easy enough to navigate in the daytime, at night it was a different story. There were roots and occasional potholes and it was surrounded on both sides by water. There were steep drops to the river, which was rocky. The canal is deep. And our son wasn’t wearing a helmet. If he fell, hit his head, and slid into the river or the canal, that would be an ugly situation.
My wife decided if we didn’t get in touch with him by 10 PM, we were calling the police. I agreed.
We finally heard from him at 9:30. The nick of time. He told us they had screwed up the location and were closer than they thought, well past Manville. We found him and the other boys in Johnson Park, which is a mile from our house.
Alex was grounded for the week. He had a list of chores longer than his arm (sometimes it’s nice when the kids get in trouble).
It’s too bad because he almost didn’t get into any trouble at all. He would have had a great story and been on an epic adventure, and suffered no consequences. He just needed to use his poker logic.
I told him this was a situation where he “stayed married to the bet” and “threw good money after bad.” One of the most important things in Texas Hold’em is to be aggressive — to go for it — and then if you know you are beaten, get out of the hand. Fold. He did the reverse, he went all-in with a questionable hand.
Alex understood this. He made a sequence of bad decisions, starting with taking off towards Princeton at noon. But if he quit the sequence at any point . . . if they all turned around earlier, if they took the bus, if he got off the path and called us with his location before the sun went down, if he did any of those things, he would have been a hero. When you make a really difficult fold, they call it a “hero fold” because it’s so difficult to back out of a situation like this. Understanding this and actually making the fold are two very different things.
This is what he needed to do . . . he needed to recognize he was with two eighteen-year-olds that were headed to college and didn’t have to live with their parents for the foreseeable future. They could go all-in with fewer consequences. They had a bigger bankroll. The peer pressure got to him, and that’s fine. It happens. I did plenty of stupid stuff like that as well when I was young. There were plenty of times when I should have folded them, but I didn’t.
So Alex paid off his bet, cleaning cabinets in the kitchen, weed-whacking, etc. Maybe he learned a lesson? I also didn’t mention that his buddy Liam — the younger brother of the senior wrestler — wisely decided to stay home. He didn’t even play that hand. When you’re dealt a lousy hand, sometimes you fold immediately — you don’t get on a bike on a hot humid stormy day and head to Princeton without a helmet. But then, of course, you’re not gambling. And what fun is that?
Running to the Border (Without the Runs)
Last night my son Alex took over the cooking duties-- and while it's hard to watch . . . he's lefty, he doesn't know how to safely use a knife, and he made an extraordinary mess-- he did whip up some amazing Crunch War Supremes . . . a homemade version of the Taco Bell stoner treat; he started with a big tortilla, put some lettuce and homemade salsa on it, lay a hard tostada over the crunchy stuff, spread some black beans on the tostada, then taco meat and cheese, wrapped the tostada inside the big tortilla in a hexagonal shape, then flipped it and grilled it-- so the cheese melts into the meat, but the salsa and lettuce stay cool and crunchy and everything is safe inside the tortilla casing . . . delicious!
Robert Heinlein Probably Thought of It First
I thought I had a great idea for a sci-fi novel: several generations into an incredibly long interstellar voyage, the younger denizens of the self-sustaining starship rebel against the futility of their role in the mission-- they feel a deep ennui about their rather pragmatic purpose to live, propagate, and die in space . . . allowing some future kin to inhabit a distant world; they recognize that the ship is their entire universe and that their life is simply a part of a much longer trip . . . it's symbolic or metaphorical or something, but then I didn't a little internet research and found out that this book has already been written and it's far better than anything I could imagine; Robert Heinlein's novel Orphans of the Sky skips the symbolism and feelings . . . the mutiny on the interstellar generational ship happened long ago, and now there is a superstitious pre-technological civilization living within the ship-- there are oligarchical "captains" and "scientists," but they don't do much of either-- as they believe the ship IS the entire universe and can't really understand the ancient texts, most of which are labeled heretical, and then there are the mutants and the illiterates and they all come into conflict and create a new order . . . the book is fast-moving and short and I highly recommend it (it's cheap for the Kindle).
Dave's Dental Work: Before/After/Obscurity
The chip in my tooth (the result of an elbow playing basketball) was growing larger . . . so my wife told me to go to Dr. K and get it fixed (coincidentally, my son had an identical chip in front incisor fixed a month ago) and so after a rather painful visit involving "wedges" and a lot of grinding sounds, I went from looking like this:
to this! . . . Dr. K. was very pleased with his work (if he didn't say so himself)
but because of the pandemic, my beautiful new smile will usually look like this:
so the ladies will have to wait for a vaccine.
The Operation Warp Speed Dilemma
I loathe Donald Trump, and I’m not loath to say so. I’m guessing most people who are literate enough to properly use “loath” and “loathe” in the same sentence also dislike The Donald.
You might loathe Donald Trump too.
But how much do you loathe him? Do you loathe him enough to root against the health and economic well-being of your entire nation? That’s a lot of loathing.
I’m talking about the Operation Warp Speed dilemma.
If you loathe Trump, you need to contemplate this dilemma.
Now.
At warp speed.
I recognize that contemplation at warp speed is a paradox, but that’s the situation. Sorry.
First, let’s put the cards on the table. Trump is a morally repugnant bigot who derides people from “shithole countries.” He’s an egotistical narcissist who recommends grabbing women by the private parts. He benefited from (and encouraged) Russian meddling in a democratic election. He has an odd infatuation with Vladimir Putin — a guy who is an autocratic enemy of the free press and a friend to corrupt oligarchs. Trump paid off a stripper with campaign money.
Trump’s toxic tweets undermine the mission of our government, Trump’s lies foment discord, and Trump might very well believe he’s above the rule of law. Our president has struggled to condemn white supremacists and Nazis, he has promoted dangerous conspiracy theories, and he’s dismantling the regulations that protect our air, forests, and water. He separated families at the border. He’s insulted our allies and cozied up with neo-authoritarian strongmen. He’s not loyal to anyone (including U.S. intelligence agencies) yet he demands absolute fealty. Trump’s cabinet appointees (and lack thereof) are laughable.
Trump is actively encouraging voter suppression by defunding the U.S. Postal service (at least that’s what my mailman told me).
And, of course, he’s royally screwed his big chance to redeem himself: the pandemic. He could have united the country in a cooperative response to get back on track, financially, socially, and physically. Instead, his response to COVID has been slow, inconsistent, and polarizing.
At the start, he insisted the virus would disappear, just go away. Wishful thinking.
Then he downplayed the advice of the experts, touted an antimalarial drug that had not been tested in a blind trial, and didn’t push for enough testing. He bullied states and schools into reopening, courting disaster.
He recently said of the enormous death toll, “it is what it is.”
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are running against Trump. That’s their platform. Trump is not smart enough or fit enough to lead. Trump is not the man to guide us through these troubled times. This platform should be good enough to win.
Unless . . .
Unless Operation Warp Speed works.
Operation Warp Speed is as Trump as it gets. A wild financial wager on a new and possibly faster new method of making a vaccine — using proteins and small pieces from COVID — instead of the tried and tested way (using an entire inactivated virus). For an excellent and informed summary of Moderna’s progress on their innovative mRNA vaccine, check out this Freakonomics episode: Will a Covid-19 Vaccine Change the History of Medical Research?
Several vacccines are now in Phase 3, clinical trials. This can last for years, especially if the drug is tested against placebos and other treatments in gold-standard randomized double blind experiments. But ain’t nobody got time for that. Companies are manufacturing millions of doses before the drug is fully tested and approved. On the taxpayer’s dime. Trump has been doling out billions of dollars to corporations, and the process hasn’t been particularly transparent.
If you’re still reading this, you’re probably rooting for the Democrats in November. But how hard are you rooting for them? Are you rooting against Operation Warp Speed?
Because here’s the thing. Operation Warp Speed might work. It might work fast. Maybe even before November 3rd (or whenever we finish counting the mail-in ballots . . . my mailman is not optimistic).
Or — the more likely scenario — Operation Warp Speed might end up a corrupt stew of insider trading, untested science, cronyism, corporate giveaways, and obscene conflicts of interest.
The watchdogs have their eyes on you, Dr. Slaoui.
Operation Warp Speed will probably be remembered as another Trumpian blunder: a half-baked plan with a puerile name.
These two outcomes set up a rather dark game of would you rather . . .
Would you rather that Operation Warp Speed fail and we suffer another year (or two) in the grip of this pandemic?
Due to Trump’s utter inability to curb COVID, Biden and Harris get elected.
Or do you prefer door number two . . . would you prefer that Operation Warp Speed succeeds?
Trump gloats, Trump says I told you so, Trump parades and preens. Trump tweets gloriously untrue propaganda. Trump takes full credit.
Trump convinces the anti-vaxxers to get vaccinated. Trump convinces the country to reopen. Completely. The pandemic, the lockdown, the economic crisis, unemployment . . . they all disappear. Just like he said. The stock market soars even higher.
In this version of the future, Trump gets reelected.
When Trump was asked if a working vaccine delivered before November 3rd would help his reelection chances, he said, “it wouldn’t hurt. But I’m doing it not for the election . . . I want it fast because I want to save a lot of lives.”
Anti-Trumpers might dispute this claim, but I think it’s silly to even parse this. Of course, Trump wants a vaccine for both reasons — he wants to get re-elected, but I’m also assuming he’s sincere about saving lives.
He’s not a sociopath, right?
It doesn’t matter. If Operation Warp Speed works, lives will be saved. Trump’s rationale will become irrelevant. More recently, he accused the “deep state” over at the FDA for slowing down approval of therapeutics, including convalescent plasma. The FDA wants to hold treatments to the double blind gold standard. Trump wants to forge ahead, and see a cure before the election.
So you have to decide: which scenario you are rooting for?
Philosopher Jeremy Bentham called this weird utilitarian math the “hedonistic calculus.”
How much pain would four more years of Trump cause our nation? Would the damage his administration inflicts on the environment and international affairs be more detrimental than the lengthening of the COVID crisis? How much havoc could his appointees wreak? How much more polarization can our citizenry withstand?
These questions are hard to answer.
This one is easier: how much pleasure would the end of COVID bring our nation?
If Operation Warp Speed works, there will be jobs and gyms and weddings and school. Regular school. People will go on cruises. People will go to bars and movies and mega-churches.
But there will be four more years of Trump.
For some, all the anxiety will fade away. For others, it will increase. Tweet by ludicrous tweet.
I can’t look into your soul. I don’t know how hard it would be for you to stomach another four years of Trump in the White House. I don’t know how much you loathe him. I also don’t know what other crises Trump might botch, or how much irreversible damage one man can perpetrate.
Only you can decide where you stand. Only you can do this math. The calculations aren’t pretty. But you might want to start adding up the figures now, so you’re prepared. Whether you like it or not, November is coming.
At warp speed.
You might loathe Donald Trump too.
But how much do you loathe him? Do you loathe him enough to root against the health and economic well-being of your entire nation? That’s a lot of loathing.
I’m talking about the Operation Warp Speed dilemma.
If you loathe Trump, you need to contemplate this dilemma.
Now.
At warp speed.
I recognize that contemplation at warp speed is a paradox, but that’s the situation. Sorry.
First, let’s put the cards on the table. Trump is a morally repugnant bigot who derides people from “shithole countries.” He’s an egotistical narcissist who recommends grabbing women by the private parts. He benefited from (and encouraged) Russian meddling in a democratic election. He has an odd infatuation with Vladimir Putin — a guy who is an autocratic enemy of the free press and a friend to corrupt oligarchs. Trump paid off a stripper with campaign money.
Trump’s toxic tweets undermine the mission of our government, Trump’s lies foment discord, and Trump might very well believe he’s above the rule of law. Our president has struggled to condemn white supremacists and Nazis, he has promoted dangerous conspiracy theories, and he’s dismantling the regulations that protect our air, forests, and water. He separated families at the border. He’s insulted our allies and cozied up with neo-authoritarian strongmen. He’s not loyal to anyone (including U.S. intelligence agencies) yet he demands absolute fealty. Trump’s cabinet appointees (and lack thereof) are laughable.
Trump is actively encouraging voter suppression by defunding the U.S. Postal service (at least that’s what my mailman told me).
And, of course, he’s royally screwed his big chance to redeem himself: the pandemic. He could have united the country in a cooperative response to get back on track, financially, socially, and physically. Instead, his response to COVID has been slow, inconsistent, and polarizing.
At the start, he insisted the virus would disappear, just go away. Wishful thinking.
Then he downplayed the advice of the experts, touted an antimalarial drug that had not been tested in a blind trial, and didn’t push for enough testing. He bullied states and schools into reopening, courting disaster.
He recently said of the enormous death toll, “it is what it is.”
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are running against Trump. That’s their platform. Trump is not smart enough or fit enough to lead. Trump is not the man to guide us through these troubled times. This platform should be good enough to win.
Unless . . .
Unless Operation Warp Speed works.
Operation Warp Speed is as Trump as it gets. A wild financial wager on a new and possibly faster new method of making a vaccine — using proteins and small pieces from COVID — instead of the tried and tested way (using an entire inactivated virus). For an excellent and informed summary of Moderna’s progress on their innovative mRNA vaccine, check out this Freakonomics episode: Will a Covid-19 Vaccine Change the History of Medical Research?
Several vacccines are now in Phase 3, clinical trials. This can last for years, especially if the drug is tested against placebos and other treatments in gold-standard randomized double blind experiments. But ain’t nobody got time for that. Companies are manufacturing millions of doses before the drug is fully tested and approved. On the taxpayer’s dime. Trump has been doling out billions of dollars to corporations, and the process hasn’t been particularly transparent.
If you’re still reading this, you’re probably rooting for the Democrats in November. But how hard are you rooting for them? Are you rooting against Operation Warp Speed?
Because here’s the thing. Operation Warp Speed might work. It might work fast. Maybe even before November 3rd (or whenever we finish counting the mail-in ballots . . . my mailman is not optimistic).
Or — the more likely scenario — Operation Warp Speed might end up a corrupt stew of insider trading, untested science, cronyism, corporate giveaways, and obscene conflicts of interest.
The watchdogs have their eyes on you, Dr. Slaoui.
Operation Warp Speed will probably be remembered as another Trumpian blunder: a half-baked plan with a puerile name.
These two outcomes set up a rather dark game of would you rather . . .
Would you rather that Operation Warp Speed fail and we suffer another year (or two) in the grip of this pandemic?
Due to Trump’s utter inability to curb COVID, Biden and Harris get elected.
Or do you prefer door number two . . . would you prefer that Operation Warp Speed succeeds?
Trump gloats, Trump says I told you so, Trump parades and preens. Trump tweets gloriously untrue propaganda. Trump takes full credit.
Trump convinces the anti-vaxxers to get vaccinated. Trump convinces the country to reopen. Completely. The pandemic, the lockdown, the economic crisis, unemployment . . . they all disappear. Just like he said. The stock market soars even higher.
In this version of the future, Trump gets reelected.
When Trump was asked if a working vaccine delivered before November 3rd would help his reelection chances, he said, “it wouldn’t hurt. But I’m doing it not for the election . . . I want it fast because I want to save a lot of lives.”
Anti-Trumpers might dispute this claim, but I think it’s silly to even parse this. Of course, Trump wants a vaccine for both reasons — he wants to get re-elected, but I’m also assuming he’s sincere about saving lives.
He’s not a sociopath, right?
It doesn’t matter. If Operation Warp Speed works, lives will be saved. Trump’s rationale will become irrelevant. More recently, he accused the “deep state” over at the FDA for slowing down approval of therapeutics, including convalescent plasma. The FDA wants to hold treatments to the double blind gold standard. Trump wants to forge ahead, and see a cure before the election.
So you have to decide: which scenario you are rooting for?
Philosopher Jeremy Bentham called this weird utilitarian math the “hedonistic calculus.”
How much pain would four more years of Trump cause our nation? Would the damage his administration inflicts on the environment and international affairs be more detrimental than the lengthening of the COVID crisis? How much havoc could his appointees wreak? How much more polarization can our citizenry withstand?
These questions are hard to answer.
This one is easier: how much pleasure would the end of COVID bring our nation?
If Operation Warp Speed works, there will be jobs and gyms and weddings and school. Regular school. People will go on cruises. People will go to bars and movies and mega-churches.
But there will be four more years of Trump.
For some, all the anxiety will fade away. For others, it will increase. Tweet by ludicrous tweet.
I can’t look into your soul. I don’t know how hard it would be for you to stomach another four years of Trump in the White House. I don’t know how much you loathe him. I also don’t know what other crises Trump might botch, or how much irreversible damage one man can perpetrate.
Only you can decide where you stand. Only you can do this math. The calculations aren’t pretty. But you might want to start adding up the figures now, so you’re prepared. Whether you like it or not, November is coming.
At warp speed.
Bamboo Part Two
One of the primary functions of this blog (besides allowing you to generate witty comments) is to act as my memory . . . I know how a fairly accurate timeline of my life stretching back over a decade, including the many landscaping projects I've done along my back fence line . . . for posterity, here's a quick history and an update of my newest endeavor:
1) back in 2011, I tore down a rotted wooden fence that was engulfed by our neighbor's out of control ivy and weeds and planted some arborvitae along our the back property line . . . I also diplomatically mollified some neighborly conflict, despite having feelings of violence;
2) in 2013, the arborvitae turned brown so I transplanted them and gave a few to my friend Dom . . . they all rebounded, but obviously, my back property line was not conducive to growing arborvitae;
3) later that summer, we had a fence put in and I planted some clumping bamboo: fargesia rufa . . . it's done quite well, as you can see in the photo;
4) all the while, I might have been pilfering large stones from the park, to outline the mulch beds:
5) now I've started work on the side fence line-- why I didn't do this ten years ago is beyond me-- but I've just planted two lovely fargesia nitida plants . . . I got them from Barton Nursery for 49.95 apiece, which is pretty cheap for larger bamboo plants . . . this is the description on the internet:
Fargesia nitida 'Jiuzhaigou'
A highly ornamental, non-invasive, clumping bamboo with finely textured foliage and striking red canes that age to yellow. 
and here's the other . . .
6) before I could get them in the ground, I had to move a bunch of rocks-- my past self screwed me on that one-- and dig a couple large holes; it took 19 bags of topsoil to fill these holes, plus I threw down some back mulch . . . I am very very sore from doing this labor in the humidity, it always astounds me how much harder yardwork is than organized exercise . . . I still have to move all the rocks between the two plants, put down a bunch more topsoil and plant one more bamboo clump . . . but there's obviously no rush, as I'll be working on this fence line until I move or die, whichever comes first.
PPE Paradox
This is what I've learned from coaching with a mask on: when I project my voice while wearing a mask, I get a sore throat . . . and when I get a sore throat, I'm not supposed to go to school-- as this is a symptom of COVID . . . but I'm required to wear a mask while I'm teaching/coaching . . . it's a PPE paradox!
I've Had It With All You Damned Liberals (Conservatives)
I’ve had it. All you damned liberals (conservatives) need to curtail this partisan bickering.
Stop consuming NPR podcasts (conspiracy theories) and seek out some unbiased information. If you keep listening to Ira Glass (Alex Jones) then you’re going to end up a hot yoga enthusiast (right-wing militia-member) or worse.
The New York Times (FOX News) will convince you that Donald Trump (Nancy Pelosi) is Hitler (Satan). How can you be empathetic (patriotic) towards other Americans in that frame of mind?
The liberal media (right-wing talk radio empire) always accentuates the downside. It’s not healthy (bacon). Try to see the silver lining. Politicians like Bernie Sanders (Mitch McConnell) just want to free you from the burden of personal responsibility (financial and environmental regulations).
If you truly cared about American Exceptionalism (This Tract of Land We Stole From the Native Americans) then you would understand that we now tragically live in a system that privileges a culture of victimhood (wealthy white people).
You should want this to change (stay the same).
It would be nice to discuss these things with folks on the opposite end of the political spectrum, but unfortunately the vast majority of our citizens no longer value the First Amendment (civilized discourse) and so we can’t hold a reasonable debate without resorting to microaggressions (censorship).
Since we can’t hold a cooperative dialogue, people resort to extreme measures. This will never work. You can’t desecrate The American Flag (Gwyneth Paltrow’s modern lifestyle brand Goop) just to own (pwn) the rednecks and NASCAR fans (snowflakes and libtards).
Remember, your economic choices also feed into this. We can’t keep eating this much meat. It’s not sustainable. You need to go vegan (hunting). And we have to be realistic. You can’t buy all your produce from Wal-Mart (local farm markets). There’s got to be a balance.
Most importantly, we’ve got to live-and-let-live (contact trace). How can we be so concerned with Civil War statues (transgender bathroom issues) when the rest of the world is in dire need of mosquito netting (World Bank free-market policy incentives). These countries are stealing our precious intellectual property (dying from river blindness).
The horror.
You sit at home, anxious over the Honduran migrant caravan (Russian meddling in the election) and nothing comes of it. It all fades away. Like Charlton Heston (Robert Redford).
The same goes for COVID. Stop worrying! Soon enough, we’ll have herd immunity (a death count over a million). If we could all just work together and wear masks (open bars and gyms) then we’d be able to move on to the next challenge . . .
Developing a plan to combat global warming (illegal immigrants).
The important thing is that we use the tenets of science (Christian morality) to make our decisions.
There are some things beyond our control. The proliferation of guns (gay marriage) isn’t going away. The genie is out of the bottle. You just have to hope your children don’t end up massacred in a school shooting (LGBTTQQIAAP).
We can’t reproduce (dwell on) the past. What’s done is done. This nation was once great (built by slaves) and we need to make it great again (reduce income inequality). Until that wonderful (rapturous) day comes, the best thing to do is chillax (go on a journey of self-reflection). Loosen up (check your privilege).
Throw your coonhound (Golden-doodle) into the back of your Dodge Ram pick-up (Subaru Outback) and head to the nearest BLM land (dog park). Stop on the way and grab some Chick-fil-A (Mamoun’s falafel). Don’t forget the extra mayo (tahini sauce).
When you finish drinking your Coke (bottled water) go ahead and toss it out the window (recycle it). Not that it matters anyway.
Once you arrive at your nearest city park (loosely regulated state land) enjoy the calls of the starlings (drone of the ATVs). Find a bench (deer blind) and pull out your NYT Sunday crossword (recurve compound crossbow). Grab a bolt (pen) from your quiver (manpurse) and kill it.
Breath in the fresh air. Forget about all the unborn children (elephant tusks) being aborted (poached) at this very moment. Think happy thoughts. This polarization can’t continue. We’re all God’s creatures (common ancestors of apelike hominids).
We need to learn to get along, as we’re going to share the same space for a long time — unless gerrymandering (the boogaloo) separates us permanently. Until then, enough of this. It’s counter-productive (essential to obstructing interlopers into our corrupt two-party system).
Full disclosure, I’m an A.I. bot developed by Russian meddlers (an agent of the deep state).
Stop consuming NPR podcasts (conspiracy theories) and seek out some unbiased information. If you keep listening to Ira Glass (Alex Jones) then you’re going to end up a hot yoga enthusiast (right-wing militia-member) or worse.
The New York Times (FOX News) will convince you that Donald Trump (Nancy Pelosi) is Hitler (Satan). How can you be empathetic (patriotic) towards other Americans in that frame of mind?
The liberal media (right-wing talk radio empire) always accentuates the downside. It’s not healthy (bacon). Try to see the silver lining. Politicians like Bernie Sanders (Mitch McConnell) just want to free you from the burden of personal responsibility (financial and environmental regulations).
If you truly cared about American Exceptionalism (This Tract of Land We Stole From the Native Americans) then you would understand that we now tragically live in a system that privileges a culture of victimhood (wealthy white people).
You should want this to change (stay the same).
It would be nice to discuss these things with folks on the opposite end of the political spectrum, but unfortunately the vast majority of our citizens no longer value the First Amendment (civilized discourse) and so we can’t hold a reasonable debate without resorting to microaggressions (censorship).
Since we can’t hold a cooperative dialogue, people resort to extreme measures. This will never work. You can’t desecrate The American Flag (Gwyneth Paltrow’s modern lifestyle brand Goop) just to own (pwn) the rednecks and NASCAR fans (snowflakes and libtards).
Remember, your economic choices also feed into this. We can’t keep eating this much meat. It’s not sustainable. You need to go vegan (hunting). And we have to be realistic. You can’t buy all your produce from Wal-Mart (local farm markets). There’s got to be a balance.
Most importantly, we’ve got to live-and-let-live (contact trace). How can we be so concerned with Civil War statues (transgender bathroom issues) when the rest of the world is in dire need of mosquito netting (World Bank free-market policy incentives). These countries are stealing our precious intellectual property (dying from river blindness).
The horror.
You sit at home, anxious over the Honduran migrant caravan (Russian meddling in the election) and nothing comes of it. It all fades away. Like Charlton Heston (Robert Redford).
The same goes for COVID. Stop worrying! Soon enough, we’ll have herd immunity (a death count over a million). If we could all just work together and wear masks (open bars and gyms) then we’d be able to move on to the next challenge . . .
Developing a plan to combat global warming (illegal immigrants).
The important thing is that we use the tenets of science (Christian morality) to make our decisions.
There are some things beyond our control. The proliferation of guns (gay marriage) isn’t going away. The genie is out of the bottle. You just have to hope your children don’t end up massacred in a school shooting (LGBTTQQIAAP).
We can’t reproduce (dwell on) the past. What’s done is done. This nation was once great (built by slaves) and we need to make it great again (reduce income inequality). Until that wonderful (rapturous) day comes, the best thing to do is chillax (go on a journey of self-reflection). Loosen up (check your privilege).
Throw your coonhound (Golden-doodle) into the back of your Dodge Ram pick-up (Subaru Outback) and head to the nearest BLM land (dog park). Stop on the way and grab some Chick-fil-A (Mamoun’s falafel). Don’t forget the extra mayo (tahini sauce).
When you finish drinking your Coke (bottled water) go ahead and toss it out the window (recycle it). Not that it matters anyway.
Once you arrive at your nearest city park (loosely regulated state land) enjoy the calls of the starlings (drone of the ATVs). Find a bench (deer blind) and pull out your NYT Sunday crossword (recurve compound crossbow). Grab a bolt (pen) from your quiver (manpurse) and kill it.
Breath in the fresh air. Forget about all the unborn children (elephant tusks) being aborted (poached) at this very moment. Think happy thoughts. This polarization can’t continue. We’re all God’s creatures (common ancestors of apelike hominids).
We need to learn to get along, as we’re going to share the same space for a long time — unless gerrymandering (the boogaloo) separates us permanently. Until then, enough of this. It’s counter-productive (essential to obstructing interlopers into our corrupt two-party system).
Full disclosure, I’m an A.I. bot developed by Russian meddlers (an agent of the deep state).
If You Don't See It, You Might Like It
When I make tacos, I use beer as the liquid to absorb the seasonings-- but when my wife is around while I'm cooking, she won't allow me to do this . . . even though she always loves my tacos-- because she claims she doesn't like things cooked with beer (she obviously does) and when I'm around, my wife can't cook anything with milk in it, because I don't like things with milk as an ingredient (even though my wife makes plenty of recipes that contain milk . . . it's reciprocal, if I don't see the milk go into the food, I'm fine with, but if I see it happen, then I don't want to eat it).
My Two Brilliant Plans
Here are my two brilliant plans:
1) My Brilliant Plan: How to Reopen High School During the Pandemic . . . Safely
2) I am editing and post some pieces on Medium and hoping one gets "curated" and I can actually make some money for my writing . . . if you're up for it, click the link, give my brilliant plan a read, and get me some views on the site . . . thanks!
1) My Brilliant Plan: How to Reopen High School During the Pandemic . . . Safely
2) I am editing and post some pieces on Medium and hoping one gets "curated" and I can actually make some money for my writing . . . if you're up for it, click the link, give my brilliant plan a read, and get me some views on the site . . . thanks!
Fleetwood Mac is Getting Back Together! Even Lindsey Buckingham
Rumors are more contagious than coronavirus
(my friend learned this the hard way: he was running high school soccer practice-- seventy kids, all in socially distanced pods-- when a mom showed up and grabbed her kid, who was wearing a mask . . . she then informed my friend that her son had just tested positive for COVID . . . she sent her kid to practice with the possibility that he had COVID! . . . so that kid's pod is sidelined for two weeks but otherwise, my friend never came within twenty feet of this kid . . . soon enough though, the moms in HIS town knew the story of the player removed from practice because he has COVID-- my friend does not coach in the same town in which he lives-- and so because this rumor spread that my friend might be infected, my friend's kid was not allowed to go to soccer camp in HIS town because my friend was in the general vicinity of a high school kid with COVID . . . I am certain there will be plenty more of this to come when school starts).
If You Have Young Children, Maybe Don't Read This?
I know the complexity of the upcoming school year has many people are seeking childcare . . . so here's a reverse-recommendation:
if you have young children and you are about to entrust them in the hands of a stranger, you should NOT read Leila Slimani's novel The Perfect Nanny . . . it's inspired by a true story and Lauren Collins of the New Yorker dubbed it "the killer-nanny story that conquered France" . . .
but if you don't have young kids, go for it!
Refrigeration and Sanitation are Winners
If you want to appreciate modern life-- and I'm talking about modern life, not our post-modern lives on the internet-- then you can either read Robert J. Gordon's fantastic and comprehensive book The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living Since the Civil War or you could go without a refrigerator for three weeks.
I've done both. I prefer the Gordon book.
These are the big five:
1) electricity
2) urban sanitation
3) chemicals and pharmaceuticals
4) modern travel (the internal combustion engine and plane travel)
5) modern communication
We just got our new fridge yesterday, and it's amazing. Big, cold inside, and easy to shut tightly. It makes ice and preserves food. We got a Frigidaire because that's what Steve the Appliance Doctor recommended. Our old fridge had a bottom drawer freezer and he said those are the kiss-of-death for the compressor. It easy to leave them cracked open, and then the compressor has to work really hard to push the cold air up to the fridge.
Of course, this was a first-world problem, as we had a small refrigerator/freezer in the basement. But you had to descend a flight of stairs, and really bend down to get to the tiny vegetable drawers. And no ice.
Refrigeration and air-conditioning are miracles that allow you to enjoy all the internet can provide. Without them, you couldn't be inside your house in the summer. Grid electricity and urban sanitation are particularly nice when its 95 degrees and you are holed up because of a pandemic.
We've also been living without an upstairs show-- contractors are replacing the bathroom tiles. We had a leak. So we've all been using the shower in the basement . . . we'll appreciate all our urban sanitation once we get that back.
These technological advances have allowed for humans to enjoy incredible population density and incredible ease of global movement. Population density creates the most vibrant and creative places in the world: cities. The freedom to travel allows us to move from city to city, like little gods of the planet.
The cost of this density and ability to travel is the pandemic.
So it looks like we're going to need a technological solution to COVID-19. If you don't think so . . . if you've got delusions of naturally reaching herd immunity, stop watching random people on YouTube and listen to Short Wave: Why Herd Immunity Won't Save Us . . . it's a credible and vetted science podcast that explains what we know about COVID, herd immunity, and Sweden's experiment.
In other news, I can't wait until the contractors are done. It's hard for me to read, nap, blog and otherwise be lazy when people are working so hard in my house (I did work pretty hard at soccer practice this morning, coaching in the heat with a mask on, but that was only for three hours).
When Are You Too Old For This Sort of Thing? When You're Too Hungover to Do the Mini?
This Thursday evening at the Park Pub was exponentially more pleasant than last Thursday evening at the Park Pub. Last Thursday, it was so hot that I couldn't stop sweating for the entirety of my pub visit. I had played tennis just before pub night and my shower didn't take. We played some cornhole in a very hot parking lot, and I left early.
This Thursday the weather was balmy. Paul and I ruled the cornhole board for so long the guys actually kicked us off because we were too good. Pathetic. Pete-- the owner-- agreed with us and said, "That's what's wrong with America today."
I lost track of time and how much beer I drank. The pitchers were endless. Pete stayed open later than usual-- there was quite a crowd. He kept serving us and we kept playing cornhole. As Connell, Paul, and I imbibed more and more, Tom got better and better. Weird.
After midnight, we finished our last pitcher and did some late-night breaking and entering that I won't divulge. Then I stumbled towards home. On the way, I walked into a cop. He told me to watch out for the downed-powerline ahead. We chatted, and he was very pleasant, especially considering the state I was in.
I made it home and found myself locked out. It was 1 AM. Someone had locked the glass sliding door on the back porch, which was supposed to be open. I had no keys. I didn't want to wake everyone, so I texted Catherine that I was locked out and then lay down on the wooden recliner on the porch. I was out like a light. I woke up at 3 AM. It was raining. I wandered around to the front door, thinking I might ring the bell or call, and our dog Lola heard me. She shook her collar, waking Catherine who noticed I wasn't in bed. She came down and let me in.
I felt pretty hazy on Friday but still put in a fine effort on the NYT mini crossword.
G is for Grunge?
Sue Grafton's mystery novel "H" is for Homicide is the second book I've read this summer that was published in 1991
I had never read a Kinsey Millhone story before . . . I always assumed Grafton's books were kind of cutesy, but that was a sexist assumption. Millhone is a gritty and clever master prevaricator-- she normally investigates insurance fraud (and it takes on to know one) and it seems that she always gets involved in the seedy underworld that she often investigates. There's a Millhone book for every letter of the alphabet except Z (a sad fact that Whitney pointed out to me . . . Grafton lost her battle with cancer before she could write number twenty-six).
Grafton's description of The Meat Locker and the other bars in the book really brought me back to the early '90s. It was a gross and grimy time to come of age.
The Darkest Educational Race of All
Here's a grim question for you:
For the past decade-- on average-- around twenty people a year have died in school shootings.
There's no data yet for school-related COVID-19, but we'll have some soon!
It's like betting on which Nazgûl will win the horse race.
Frustrating Stuff
Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World by Anand Giridharadas and Nice White Parents by the Serial podcasting crew both get at the same frustrating theme: even people who espouse progress and change may also be perpetuating a beneficial status quo.
Giridharadas exposes the truth of MarketWorld. Business people use corporations to exploit workers and the environment and the law to make huge sums of money, and then-- once they have become extraordinarily rich-- these same people abrogate democracy and construct win-win business-oriented solutions to the very problems they have relied on for their success.
It's not a fun read. The system is skewed, corrupt, and weighted impossibly in favor of the wealthy. Money can even bend ideas. Public intellectuals become thought leaders.
I think the only answer is unions. Workers need more power, not the well-meaning philanthropy of people interested in preserving the same systems that got them all their money and power.
If you don't feel like reading the book, watch the "Why Billionaires Won't Save Us" episode of Hassan Minaj's excellent show Patriot Act. I can't embed it because it's from Netflix, but here's Giridharadas on The Daily.
The new podcast Nice White Parents treads similar ground. It's tracing segregation and diversity in New York Public Schools all the way back to the 1950s. Again, the liberal white parents of NYC talk a good game about progress, de-segregation, and change, but when it comes down to it they want to preserve the system. They're not ready to sacrifice their kids' education for their ideals.
This makes sense. It's hard to change the system where you have succeeded. Frustrating stuff, if you're on the other side.
If Your Friends Jumped Off a Bridge, You Would Too (3x)
On Friday, soccer practice was canceled because the varsity coach and his immediate family had some exposure to some folks who came down with coronavirus. They had to do the whole test-and-wait thing.
So since there was no soccer, my son Alex said he was going to play spikeball with his friends.
Serendipitously, our acupuncturist had just opened up. She has two rooms at her office, so my wife and I both booked appointments. We told our other son Ian where we were going, put our phones on do not disturb, and went and got punctured.
During that hour block when we were incommunicado pincushions, my son Alex sent a sequence of interesting texts.
He was not playing spikeball.
Instead, him and his older buddies had decided to head to "the safest place in New Jersey." His definition of "the safest place in New Jersey" was a nearby lake with a small cliff to jump off. He said the cliff was seven feet or so.
We were sort of annoyed that he didn't check with us before he took off on this adventure-- and we added a new rule to the parenting handbook: if you can't contact us, you are not allowed to leave town on a dangerous adventure!
We asked for some details and got them. I've got to commend my son on being the only one in this group to actually disclose where he was headed. The other kids did NOT inform their parents what they were doing.
Of course, he did not FULLY disclose what was going on. Not sure if this was due to ignorance or his desire to protect his mother from the truth.
First of all, he was headed an hour SOUTH on the Turnpike, not north.
Second, he was jumping off a forty-foot bridge into a dirty tidal estuary. Kraft's Bridge. While it's not the safest place in New Jersey-- my living room couch is the safest place in New Jersey-- it's supposedly fairly safe, as far as bridge-jumping goes.
This is what happens when soccer practice is canceled due to a pandemic.
Alex was with the same guys that he went on this epic biking adventure with. They just graduated and he's a rising junior, so I can see how this all went down.
How do you refuse a bridge jumping expedition with some college guys?
His buddy Gary went as well . . . Gary said he was going to "rocket club." Some of you may know Gary from the NYT Mini-crossword leaderboard. He's a smart kid. So that made me feel better.
As an aside, now Alex and his two older buddies have completed the biking and swimming legs of a very stupid triathlon.
I assume the running portion will involve streaking.
As usual, though this was kind of a rash decision, things might have gone smoothly, if it wasn't for a lack of communication. Alex stopped answering calls and texts, and we didn't have his friends' cell-phone numbers.
Like his bike adventure, it got dark and my wife got increasingly worried.
I texted my friend and asked if he had heard from his son. He said no, that his son had gone to play spikeball. I informed him that his son was not playing spikeball, he was down in south Jersey, jumping off a bridge into a river.
"Sounds bad," my friend texted back.
So now my wife and I were just hanging around, worried. We hadn't heard from anyone.
I call this dilemma Schrödinger's Phone.
If cell-phones didn't exist-- like when we were young-- then none of the parents would have had any idea of what was going on. Ignorance is bliss. We would have thought that Alex was playing spikeball and he lost track of time.
We would have been annoyed but not worried.
But it's not 1986 (spikeball didn't even exist in 1986).
It's 2020 and so-- like Schrödinger's cat-- the boys were in a quantum superposition. They were in all states: drowned in the Rancocas Creek, on their way home, broken down on the side of the Turnpike, etc. Alive, dead, injured, safe, sound . . . until we got information from the phone, all the possibilities in the universe are possible.
A message from the phone would reveal (and possibly create) their reality. That's what we were waiting for.
It finally came, around 8:30 PM. They had left their phones in the car, so they wouldn't get wet (except for the kid who drove-- he had a waterproof phone and brought it to the river in case they needed to call 911).
The reason they got held up for so long is that their driver-- the kid with the phone-- froze up on the concrete ledge. He couldn't climb back up to the bridge and he was too scared to jump. I've seen this happen to people. So this poor kid spent over an hour on the ledge, petrified. Meanwhile, Alex said he did the jump three times. From the concrete ledge and from the bridge itself. So did his other two friends.
Finally, their driver jumped. They all walked back to the car, only to find that their driver has left the keys back by the river. He had to walk all the way back down the path, in the dark, to find his keys.
Alex said he could see his phone ringing in the car and knew he was in trouble. But he couldn't get to it.
Luckily, the driver found his keys, and they got home safe and sound.
Alex got to clean all the bathrooms in our Saturday morning (and that's just the start of his chore list).
Once again, he was fairly close to getting through this adventure without consequence, but he was done in by the existence of cell-phones. And, as I said, it turns out he was the only person who gave his parents any idea of where he was going. So there's that.
And it's kind of nice to have someone clean all the bathrooms. I'm sure this won't be the last time he does that . . .
Dave Does the Work of THREE Journalists
The New York Times just put out a fancy version of my post about the math behind opening schools during the pandemic.
Your welcome.
Even after stealing my idea, it still took the work of three professional journalists to write this article (they do have some fancy maps and graphs).
If you're an avid follower of SoD, then you got the scoop here first.
The Risk That Students Could Arrive at School With the Coronavirus
I'm assuming I'll get a thank you from James Glanz, Benedict Carey and Matthew Conlen any time now.
I'm also torn on what public policy should be in New Jersey right now.
Should we open up bars, restaurants, and gyms and see what happens? We can't open schools until we at least try these smaller venues.
Or should we lockdown again for two weeks-- really really lockdown-- then test as many people as we can, and THEN try to open schools?
We either need to make opening schools a priority or give up on live schooling in the near future, but this middle ground isn't going to work.
New Jersey had 690 new cases today.
So we kind of know exactly what is going to happen if we open up under these circumstances.
The Funhole is No Fun
The Cipher by Kathe Koja is one of the weirdest, darkest, most disturbing things I've ever read. It was originally published in 1991 and it reeks of grunge. The original title was "The Funhole," which is what Nicholas and Nakota have discovered in the storage room down the hall.
Blackhole fun.
After a series of bizarre experiments with the hole-- spearheaded by Nakota-- Nicholas ends up with a second funhole in his hand. And things keep getting weirder. The tone is dark, dank, and ambiguous. I'm not sure if I recommend this book, but it was impossible to put down.
Here are a few quotations to give you the idea of the tone:
These days she must really be gnawing them, and I wondered if the hand had bitten nails too. I’d read that nails
kept growing, after death, a little while. “Who bites the nails of the dead?” I said, silly sonorous voice, and was rewarded with one of Nakota’s rarest smiles, a grin of genuine amusement. “I do,” she said, and went
on fishing.
You can get used to being wrong all the time; it takes all the responsibility out of things.
I was so tired of hating myself. But I was so good at it, it was such a comfortable way to be, goddamn fucking flotsam on the high seas, the low tide, a little wad of nothing shrugging
and saying Hey, sorry, I didn’t mean it, I didn’t know it was loaded, I didn’t think things would turn out this
way. It’s so easy to be nothing.
And a moment oddly resonant of now . . .
All bodies are, in some sense; engines driven by the health or disease of their owners, jackets of flesh that are the
physical sum of their wearers. But to become your disease? To become the consumption itself?
High School + COVID + Math = Hot-Zone Mess
Here's some basic math so you can get a grip on the back-to-school situation in New Jersey. For the past week, 426 cases of COVID-19 have been blossoming in The Garden State each day. On average. And depending on what source you check, the numbers can be higher than this.
These positive tests are accumulating while bars and restaurants and gyms and schools are closed.
The population of New Jersey is 8.82 million, but for the sake of making the math easy, we'll round the population up to nine million.
Conclusions and Relevance: Excess deaths provide an estimate of the full COVID-19 burden and indicate that official tallies likely undercount deaths due to the virus.
In comparison, Germany has a population of 83 million. Nearly ten times the population of New Jersey. Germany is also generating around 400-500 cases a day. Though Germany is 10x our size, they are "very concerned" with this number of cases per day. So while New Jersey may have this under control in comparison to Florida and Arizona, we do NOT have this actually under control.
Let's look at the math, see what will happen statistically if we send everyone back to school (if you don't want to look at the math, the Superintendent of South Brunswick High School has written a very compelling, non-mathematical argument of why it is too soon to open).
When Gerba and other University of Arizona researchers studied the desks, computers, and phones from various professions, teachers wrecked the curve.
Teachers had six times more germs in their workspace than accountants, the second-place finisher, with slightly cleaner desks but five-and-a-half times more germs on their phones, nearly twice as many germs on their computer mice and nearly 27 times more germs on their computer keyboards than the other professions studied.
The reason for all the germs is, of course, the reason why the teachers are there in the first place.
"Kids' desktops are really bad, too," Gerba said. "Probably the dirtiest object in a classroom is a kid's desktop."
Adults aged 18 to 49 now account for more hospitalized cases than people aged 50 to 64 or those 65 and older.
For the sake of easy arithmetic, we'll say that Jersey is germinating 3000 new positive tests each week. Obviously, there are far more than 3000 people in New Jersey that have COVID at any given time. Some people are asymptomatic and some have less severe symptoms. Some didn't get tested.
There may be ten times as many people with the virus as the testing indicates, but I can't even get into those numbers . . . they would be nuts.
There may be ten times as many people with the virus as the testing indicates, but I can't even get into those numbers . . . they would be nuts.
COVID is transmissible before you have a fever, while you have a fever-- which can last from a couple of days to a couple of weeks-- and then it's still transmissible after the fever has broken. It is recommended that you quarantine for ten days once the fever naturally breaks. So a week's worth of COVID cases is probably contagious for around two weeks after that. The point is this: the five hundred or so cases that test positive each day in New Jersey don't just disappear a day later. They pile up.
Understand that all these numbers underestimate the actual prevalence of the virus.
In a three week period, at the very least, 9000 people in New Jersey are going to test positive for COVID-19. Many more will actually be contagious. But we'll work with 9000 because that's approximately .1 percent of our population.
One in every thousand New Jerseyans.
Doesn't sound like much . . . until you put people in school.
Of course, far more than one in a thousand residents will be contagious in any three week period, but we'll use that very low number to illustrate my point.
I teach in one of these schools: East Brunswick High School. We have over two thousand students (and that's just grades 10-12). We have over 200 adult employees. All crammed into an old, cobbled together building with crowded hallways, poor ventilation, and no central air-conditioning.
If you had a school of exactly one student, using our simple mathematical model, there's a one in a thousand chance that your student has COVID (in any three week period).
But if you have 2000+ students in a high school, there is almost no chance that all people inside are NOT going to have the virus. One easy way to estimate this is to multiply 999/1000 times itself two thousand times. Then subtract that percentage from one hundred percent. You get 87%. That's the chance on any given day that some student is going to have COVID in a 2000 person high school. This isn't taking into account the teachers and janitors and guidance counselors and coaches and trainers and all the parents and child study teams and other humans that come into the building or work in the building. It's not taking into account the asymptomatic and mild cases. It's not taking into account sports, the possibility of playing teams from other towns. So any large school is probably going to have two or three or five or ten people with COVID in the building. Probably more.
Some schools might get lucky for a short period of time, but it won't last. It's statistically impossible. The virus will be present. It has to be. One in a thousand is a low estimate, but these high schools contain many thousands of people. Indoors, for long periods of time. So the virus will spread. That's what the virus does, even when schools are NOT open. Even in the summer.
So what happens when we open?
There's nothing like a school to harbor germs and spread sickness. In fact, schools are the germiest place on earth. Teaching is the germiest job.
Here's some research on this:
Teachers had six times more germs in their workspace than accountants, the second-place finisher, with slightly cleaner desks but five-and-a-half times more germs on their phones, nearly twice as many germs on their computer mice and nearly 27 times more germs on their computer keyboards than the other professions studied.
The reason for all the germs is, of course, the reason why the teachers are there in the first place.
"Kids' desktops are really bad, too," Gerba said. "Probably the dirtiest object in a classroom is a kid's desktop."
During a typical school year, I get sick a couple of times. A cold or two, perhaps bronchitis, a stomach bug, occasionally strep, and the one year I didn't get the flu shot, I got H1N1. I used to think this was normal for adults, but now I realize it's not.
Since the lockdown, I have not been sick at all. Not even a sniffle. The last time I was sick was February. I had an awful cough for two weeks and a fever. It may have been COVID, though I tested negative for antibodies (that test isn't supposed to be accurate). The teacher across the hall from me had COVID . . . so who knows? The point is, when you are in a huge school, there's stuff going around all the time. It's a petri dish.
I used to think this was a perk of the job. My immune system is so strong! It's dealt with everything!
Now I think it's a bargaining chip. We are going to be on the front line of this pandemic and we've been on the front line of general sickness and we should be compensated for it, with money and health benefits. I never really considered this until now. Many of us work in hot, crowded, poorly ventilated buildings, and-- unlike the meatpackers that have been sacrificed during this pandemic-- we have a union.
It's going to be quite a clash.
I understand that it's hard to wrap your head around this because it's so statistical. We all really want things to go back to normal, the economy to open, schools to open, etc. It sucks.
But 1 in every 550 people has died in New Jersey. That's significant. Many of these people were old and/or sick, but not all of them. We've had over 182,000 cases and nearly 16,000 deaths. So nearly nine percent of the people that tested positive died. That's an insanely high rate of death. Yes, many of them were in nursing homes, but lately, according to recent hospitalization data in the New York Times:
Again, this is all happening with schools closed, bars closed, restaurants closed, gyms closed.
If you haven't felt the pernicious power of this virus, you are lucky. You are probably also fairly well off economically, you probably have the ability to work from home, you probably don't live in a multi-generational house or apartment, you might not have a lot of underlying health conditions, and you probably don't work in an essential service, as a grocery store employer or meatpacker or a nurse.
You might not know people in those situations.
So to understand the situation, you need to study the numbers.
You also need to understand that schools are the social-class blender of many towns. Kids from mansions and kids from apartments mingle. Kids who spent the summer in quarantine hang out with kids who worked all summer. Kids with their own bedroom in their own large suburban house come to learn with kids who live in crowded multi-generation households. And kids from different towns go to battle against each other on the pitch or court or field . . . the COVID permutations of high school sporting events are incalculable.
While kids probably won't die from COVID, they will pass it around. Especially high school kids. And then other people will die. COVID is not as dangerous as Ebola, so it's hard to put it in perspective. Death rates lag behind infection rates, so once again, you've got to look at the data.
The final arbiter is that many more people are dying than "normal." This is with schools closed. People who think this is an overreaction need to understand these numbers. The death toll is the final statistic. The bodies are piling up. And we're probably undercounting.
Here are some numbers about "excess deaths" from the white paper I linked to. Not only are there many many more deaths than usual this year-- and these deaths are directly attributable to COVID-- but there are also extra deaths above and beyond the COVID deaths.
Results: There were approximately 781,000 total deaths in the United States from March 1 to May 30, 2020, representing 122,300 more deaths than would typically be expected at that time of year. There were 95,235 reported deaths officially attributed to COVID-19 from March 1 to May 30, 2020. The number of excess all-cause deaths was 28% higher than the official tally of COVID-19–reported deaths during that period.
Conclusions and Relevance: Excess deaths provide an estimate of the full COVID-19 burden and indicate that official tallies likely undercount deaths due to the virus.
There's going to be a vaccine soon, and then things will go back to some sort of new (and hopefully more vigilant) normal. But this has exposed some serious problems in our infrastructure and preparedness. Most of our public schools are hot, crowded, poorly-ventilated places where large numbers of humans congregate without much thought to hygiene and the spread of sickness.
Elementary schools may have a shot to open because you can keep the numbers very small. The Daily did a good podcast on how other countries (with the virus under control) have had some success in elementary schools.
We may be able to send small pods of kids back to high school. Perhaps special education students and others that need school the most, but trying to parade several thousand bodies through a typical high school-- even on a rotating schedule, even with masks-- is going to perpetuate and accelerate the spread of COVID. No question about that.
I know people don't want to hear this. I'm not happy with my math. It's inconvenient and awful. But that's the story, right now. If we want schools to open, we're going to have to get the case count way, way down.
I know people don't want to hear this. I'm not happy with my math. It's inconvenient and awful. But that's the story, right now. If we want schools to open, we're going to have to get the case count way, way down.
Israel tried to reopen schools on a large scale and this probably fueled a new outbreak.
Sweden has kept schools open, and they have the highest death rate (12%) of any European country and several teachers have died of COVID.
I don't envy the administrators and politicians that have to make these decisions, but if you look at the simplest of math, while underestimating the amount of COVID in the population, there is still only one conclusion:
The fall is going to be a hot-zone mess.
The Biggest Game in the Wildest Town
Though it didn't help my poker game, I really enjoyed Al Alvarez's classic portrait of the 1981 World Series of Poker: The Biggest Game in Town. I recommend it to everyone, whether you play poker or not. It's beautifully written, and it hearkens back to the end of a simpler, wilder time. A time when being a gambler meant loving the action more than knowing game theory.
The mix of cards and golf and high-stakes gambling reminds me a bit of the Jordan documentary, "The Last Dance."
It’s the downside of a gambler that ruins him, not his upside. When you’re playing well, you can be as good as anybody, but how you handle yourself under pressure when you’re playing badly is the character test that separates the men from the boys.
Funny and true.
Perhaps the Freudians are right, after all, when they talk of gambling as sublimation. In the words of another addict, “Sex is good, but poker lasts longer.”
As to why I enjoy poker, Alvarez nails it on the head. I'm playing for small amounts of money, but I love the competition.
This accords with Jack Binion’s theory that the top poker players are not only “mental athletes” but also former athletes, who turn to gambling when they no longer have the physical ability or the inclination for sport. “It’s a question of excitement,” Binion said. “Gambling is a manufactured thrill—you intensify the anticipation of an event by putting money on it.
I've been playing some low stakes poker during the pandemic, and while I'm not proficient yet, I do know a little. This comes from reading a bunch of books, my favorite way of learning. I read Gus Hansen's swashbuckling account of his 2007 Aussie Millions victory Every Hand Revealed and Phil Gordon's informative Little Green Book and a couple strategy books by "Action" Dan Harrington and some mathematical stuff by David Sklansky and Ed Miller.
While these instructional books are competently written, they are pretty boring (aside from Gus Hansen's book . . . his tone borders on adorable; he uses lots of exclamation points).
While the purpose of most poker books is to convince you that with a little bit of math and a little bit of strategy, you can hold your own at the table, The Biggest Game in Town takes you to another planet. A planet where you don't belong at all, where the action is astronomical, even in 1981 dollars. The money amounts sound huge by today's standards. These guys were nuts.
We are in Vegas, an odd and insular place:
J. B. Priestley once remarked that in the Southwest you are more aware of geology than of history. The land is too big, too old, too parched, too obdurate; the only alternative to submission is defiance . . .
The book focuses on what is known as "the Cadillac of Poker," Texas Hold'em.
Crandall Addington, a supremely elegant Texan, who regularly sets the sartorial standard for the tournament, and has said, “Limit poker is a science, but no-limit is an art. In limit, you are shooting at a target. In no-limit, the target comes alive and shoots back at you.”
The mix of cards and golf and high-stakes gambling reminds me a bit of the Jordan documentary, "The Last Dance."
James "Slim" Bouler would fit right into this world.
Yet some of the gamblers here, who are worth nothing compared with those people, will bet a hundred thousand without blinking. Most of them are average golfers—they shoot in the middle eighties—but at the end of a match they regularly settle up for fifty or a hundred thousand dollars. Even the golf pros don’t play for that kind of money, and if they did they probably wouldn’t be able to hold a putter. If a golf pro who shot seventy played a gambler who shot eighty-two and gave him the right handicap, he would lose all the time. The pressure would be too much for him; for the gambler, it is a stimulus.”
This is the attitude you need to be a great gambler:
This is the attitude you need to be a great gambler:
"If I had too much respect for the money I couldn’t play properly. Chips are like a bag of beans; they have a relative value and are worthless until the game is over. That is the only attitude you can have in high-stakes poker."
This is how you keep score:
This is how you keep score:
"Money is just the yardstick by which you measure your success. In Monopoly, you try to win all the cash by the end of the game. It’s the same in poker: you treat chips like play money and don’t think about it until it’s all over.”
The book is full of adages like this:
“The way I feel about those pieces of green paper is, you can’t take them with you and they may not have much value in five years’ time, but right now I can take them and trade them in for pleasure, or to bring pleasure to other people. If they had wanted you to hold on to money, they’d have made it with handles on.”
Sorry that I'm not attributing quotations, but you get the idea. The old-time poker guys like Alvarez, who is a British poet-- something foreign and innocuous. They love bending his ear about poker strategy and philosophy.
The book is full of adages like this:
“The way I feel about those pieces of green paper is, you can’t take them with you and they may not have much value in five years’ time, but right now I can take them and trade them in for pleasure, or to bring pleasure to other people. If they had wanted you to hold on to money, they’d have made it with handles on.”
Sorry that I'm not attributing quotations, but you get the idea. The old-time poker guys like Alvarez, who is a British poet-- something foreign and innocuous. They love bending his ear about poker strategy and philosophy.
It’s the downside of a gambler that ruins him, not his upside. When you’re playing well, you can be as good as anybody, but how you handle yourself under pressure when you’re playing badly is the character test that separates the men from the boys.
Funny and true.
Perhaps the Freudians are right, after all, when they talk of gambling as sublimation. In the words of another addict, “Sex is good, but poker lasts longer.”
As to why I enjoy poker, Alvarez nails it on the head. I'm playing for small amounts of money, but I love the competition.
For many of the top professionals, poker has become a substitute for sport—something that they turn to when their physical edge has gone, but that demands the same concentration, skill, and endurance and provides a channel for all their bottled-up competitiveness. “Discipline and stamina are what poker is all about, especially when you’re competing with top players in games that go on a long time,” said Brunson.
My knees are only going to last so long, but hopefully, my mind and my nerves will last a bit longer.
My knees are only going to last so long, but hopefully, my mind and my nerves will last a bit longer.
This accords with Jack Binion’s theory that the top poker players are not only “mental athletes” but also former athletes, who turn to gambling when they no longer have the physical ability or the inclination for sport. “It’s a question of excitement,” Binion said. “Gambling is a manufactured thrill—you intensify the anticipation of an event by putting money on it.
Reading . . . Books and Otherwise
Like many of you, I've been reading a lot during this pandemic. I've already read thirty-five books in 2020. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Not only have I been reading books, but my family has also subscribed to the New York Times, for obvious reasons. I'm normally not a newspaper person-- I don't think the day-to-day grind of following all the "stories" the media deems important in the 24-hour news cycle is healthy nor is it efficient use of time.
In the old days, I liked to catch up on the news by chatting with my colleagues in the English Office and my students. And I would read some magazines, but they were always way behind. That was fine. But things have changed.
I still like reading magazines because they often address broader topics-- I've been reading the usuals: The Week, The Atlantic, and Wired-- but now the articles are more of a summary and a broader perspective on stuff I've been following.
I'm not sure if it's a good thing, but each and every day I've been reading statistics and charts and numbers about the virus. Mainly in the New York Times. I think the information in The Times is trustworthy. But this information always opens up other questions, and then I end up in the black hole of the internet, something I usually stay away from. Most stuff out in the wild is just not vetted or accurate.
But how many people usually die-- on average-- each day in the United States? How many people a day are dying now, during the pandemic? What is the increase?
Try to find a solid answer that. It's difficult.
I've been listening more and more to podcasts and less and less to music. And reading lots of text strands, from worried teachers. Basically, I've been ingesting a lot of information. I'm not sure what good it does. But we are living in the weirdest, most historical moment of my lifetime.
The only other time in my life that felt like this was when my wife and I were teaching in Damascus, Syria from 2000-2003. We experienced 9/11 and the Second Intifada and the 2003 Invasion of Iraq while living in the Middle East. It felt like we were in the middle of something. Like now, there were school closings and the constant flow of information, but this is the difference: during that time, life was far more normal than not normal, occasionally punctuated by wild news events. Right now, it's the opposite. It's all wild news events punctuated by small amounts of normalcy.
I've been doing a few things to escape this information overload, which also involve reading. For the past couple of months, I've been doing the New York Times crossword (and the mini . . . if you're not doing there mini, you need to. Get on my leaderboard! Try to beat Stacey and Gary!) So I've been reading clues. You get better at deciphering them. And I've been playing low-stakes texas hold'em online. So I've been reading cards and hands.
But the best escape is still a good old fashioned book.
I recently read these three very excellent and very different books:
1) The Biggest Game in Town by Al Alvarez
2) The Cipher by Kathe Koja
3) Bad Boy Brawly Brown by Walter Mosley
I will eventually write individual reviews of each, and include my Kindle notes and quotes, but here's the skinny on each book.
The Biggest Game in Town by Al Alvarez is the best-written book on poker ever. I've read a shitload of poker books recently, and most of them are helpful (and some of them are well-written). The Alvarez book will NOT help you play poker better. Alfred Alvarez is a British poet who somehow gets assigned to cover the 1981 World Series of Poker and writes a gritty ode to old-time gambling and the people who populate that world. It's awesome and compelling.
The Cipher by Kathe Koja is a gross, weird, and frustratingly ambiguous horror novel. It was published in 1991 and it will bring you back to the age of grunge.
Bad Boy Brawly Brown by Walter Mosley is the most topical of the three, though it is set in 1964. Easy Rawlins is on a mission to help find and retrieve a friend's son: Brawly Brown. But Brawly has been radicalized by a far-left African American group. The Urban Revolutionary Party. While the Party has some good intentions, there is a fringe element of the group that Brawly has gotten involved with that is going to use violence to achieve its goals. The novel depicts the conflict between the black folks in Los Angeles on how to achieve equality and power in America, and-- as usual-- Easy Rawlins walks the tightrope between the gangsters, the radicals, the old-timers, and the police.
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