Author: fscobe144

The Making of a Teacher (1): Mr. Grillo

He sat in the top section of the Brooklyn to Staten Island ferry. We were halfway across the Narrows on our way to Bay Ridge’s 69th street pier. I should add that this particular ferry service no longer exists. When the Verrazano Bridge was completed there was no need for that particular ferry service.

This was my junior year of high school and Mr. Grillo was my social studies teacher.

On this day, a few days before Halloween, Mr. Grillo looked awful. There were dark spots under his eyes and he was quite pale. He looked sick.

“Good morning Mr. Grillo,” I said.

“Good morning Mr. Scoblete,” he said. Mr. Grillo always called his students “mister” followed by their last name.

He looked out at the skyline of Manhattan. His eyes were distant and a little dull.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“I’m tired,” he said. “I have a long day ahead of me.”

A long day? It was just a regular work day.

“Can I ask you something Mr. Scoblete?”

“Yes, yes, sure,” I said.

“Why do the students hate me? I can’t even get a lesson going and all of a sudden there are spitballs thrown at my back and weird noises when I am not facing the class. Why?”

He was right. When his back was turned as he wrote notes on the board, chaos ensued behind him. Yes, spitballs flew across the room and some hit him and stuck to the back of his suit, and half the class raised their hands in the air with their middle finger prominently displayed.

There were sneezes that only slightly covered the word “fuck” and loads of derisive laughter. You could see the back of Mr. Grillo’s neck getting redder as the chaos behind him increased in intensity. (For your information, this was a Catholic high school— one of the very best in the city!)

Once in a while Mr. Grillo would whip around trying to catch someone doing something, anything, but he never nailed anyone. In fact, the pimply-faced Sullivan, the one I thought of as “Captain Disgusto,” once had the audacity to say, “Mr. Grillo, someone threw a spitball at me.” Sullivan held up the spitball – a dripping spitball he had just taken out of his own mouth.

“Oh, ho, that’s a wet one,” laughed Sullivan’s best buddy, a kid known as black head because of the number of black heads he had on his face.

“You should control the class,” said Jimmy DiResta. “I’m here for an education.” DiResta was a moron of the first order and another of Sullivan’s followers.

Then Mr. Grillo would lose whatever reserves of calm remained and he’d start yelling at everyone and everyone he yelled at snickered and laughed at him.

“Why do they hate me so much?” Mr. Grillo said to me. I thought to myself that Catholic saints all supposedly experience the dark night of the soul. Perhaps that’s why Mr. Grillo looked so sick. He was experiencing the dark night of teaching. I wondered how many other of my teachers went through such a trial.

I tried to analyze Mr. Grillo’s problem. The very first day of class in September, Mr. Grillo had lost the students even before he knew he had lost them.

I came into the room and his back was towards me. That was fine by me. I took what I figured would be an area close to where he would seat me since the teachers tended to seat students in alphabetical order.

Then the mob came in, meaning Sullivan and his gang of eight, but Mr. Grillo did not turn to look at them, instead he wrote his name – Mr. James W. Grillo – on the board. Sullivan did an exaggerated middle finger behind Grillo’s back. His gang roared with laughter and Grillo turned around. “Yo, Mr. Brillo!” someone loudly whispered.

“What is going on here?” Mr. Grillo asked in what I took to be his disciplinary voice.

Sullivan’s gang remained silent but one of them finally said, “It was that kid over there. Balloon Head. He’s a troublemaker,” pointing to Lynch, a top student, the short, big-headed chain smoker whose only friend was me. Lynch’s face pulsed red. He was afraid to speak against Sullivan’s mob.

I wasn’t. Since I had bested Sullivan in a schoolyard fight two years before, he and I had an awkward truce. He left me alone; I left him alone. But on this one, with Lynch about to have a heart attack, I decided to take up his cause.

“Mr. Grill,” I said.

“Grillo, young man,” scolded Mr. Grillo.

“Sorry, Mr. Grillo,” I said. “Lynch here did not make any comments. He’s one of the top students in the school.”

Sullivan’s mob threw me looks. Then Sullivan said, “Naw, Balloon Head didn’t do nothing.”

So that took Lynch off the hook.

“Take seats young men,” said Mr. Grillo.

“But we don’t have assigned seats,” said Sullivan pretending to whine.

“I’ll assign seats when class begins,” said an irritated Mr. Grillo and just then the bell rang. Sullivan’s mob laughed as did most of the rest of the class who had come in during the Lynch episode.

The line had been drawn between students and teacher just like that. Grillo was the enemy and an easy one to torture and get a rise out of. Bringing blood from a teacher was fun and even “good” kids would join in the fun. With a few exceptions, Lynch and me being among them, the class had turned on Grillo. At first, Grillo didn’t have any idea but then he learned the sad news quickly.

What had he done wrong? He allowed the students to get him early by turning his back on them. You never turn your back on sharks, I thought. They are looking to devour you. These kids, none older than 17, had become man eaters and Grillo was their man. They knew they would be going at him before he could even introduce himself. He showed he was uptight from the very beginning. And his disciplinary voice carried no discipline in it.

Students don’t just go to school, they are schools—schools of predators. The Lynches of the world are exceptions. Students are sharks; that truth I had learned early in my student career. Even good kids often can’t resist the temptation of torturing a teacher.

Mr. Grillo awaited my answer. I was looking at Manhattan. I was looking at the water. Under that water might be real sharks. Sharks can smell blood. Students can smell the blood of teachers. Once they smell such blood they will often go after that teacher unmercifully.

“Mr. Grillo,” I ventured. “I don’t know what you did wrong.” I just couldn’t bring myself to tell him the truth.

In the end, it didn’t matter. Mr. Grillo left teaching after Christmas vacation. The sharks had eaten the bloody chum.

 

[Read Frank Scoblete’s Confessions of a Wayward Catholic! Available from amazon.com, kindle, Barnes and Noble, and at bookstores,]

 

Pronounce the “VA” “DOA”

The Veterans Administration should be pronounced dead on arrival.

The VA is a disgrace; it is corrupt and callous, often treating veterans as if they are enemy combatants. The agency is rife with scandal and many of our veterans have died waiting for treatment. The VA is a fetid swamp.

Veterans are American citizens that willingly put themselves in danger to protect the rest of us. In fact, without them there is no us, and no U. S.

The time has come to end the VA, to kill it dead and bury it with other rotted bureaucracies where it will, we hope, be forgotten.

The United States must start over. Here is the Scobe Plan for a fresh beginning in caring for our veterans:

  • Every veteran can go to any doctor he or she chooses. All doctors, nurses and other health care professionals are now members of the new system. A veteran cannot be turned down – ever – for care.
  • Veterans can have a card (much like Medicare and Medicaid) which allows them to receive health care – free (as in free!) in any medical office, clinic or hospital in the country. Think of this as payment for what they have done for all of us.
  • The current veterans’ hospitals should be sold to private concerns and they now become one of the innumerable hospitals serving the general public. They are no longer government institutions. If these former VA hospitals are good in their new roles as private concerns, they survive. If not, they fold. They have to make it on their own.
  • And what of the doctors treating veterans? Should they do it on the cheap? Not at all. They should be given competitive pay. I am not looking for doctors to be short-changed. Those who serve our veterans should be fairly paid.

The Scobe Plan will actually save money. We will no longer be throwing taxpayer money into the cesspool that is the Veterans Administration. Our veterans will get the care they deserve.

There are details that would have to be worked out, including how to make a Veterans Card that could not be counterfeited. I figure this would not take long, if those involved are truly focused on the task at hand.

The time has come to free the veterans from the VD of the VA and the Scobe Plan can make that happen.

[Read Frank’s book Confessions of a Wayward Catholic! Available from Amazon.com, kindle, Barnes and Noble, and at bookstores.]

Mother Nature is Nuts!

Mother Nature is nuts! I hate to offend nature lovers and those whose religious zeal makes them worship earth, known as Gaea, as if it were alive. Sorry, no, you have misplaced your trust. As I just said and repeat, “Mother Nature is nuts!”

As many of my readers know, my wife, the Beautiful AP, and I have become birders. I enjoy going into the wilderness (meaning a local park with cement paths where I can’t get lost) in order to pause in wonder at those beautiful birds, flapping their wings, sitting on branches, mating, hunting and (marvelous!) taking to the air.

Give me a power and it would be the ability to fly. Up there is a whole different world of wind whipping through my wings. Mother Nature’s blind evolution has  worked wonders.  Or has it?

At first glance it might seem so but then you realize the following creatures that are called “birds”: the Ostrich, the Emu, the Cassowary, the Rhea, the Kiwi and the pungent Penguin are all scientifically classified as class: aves; genus: grounded. None of them can fly! What kind of bird is that? Might as well call an elephant a bird since it can’t fly either.

To make matters worse, our distraught Mother Nature has created 900 different species of bats that can fly! What the hell? Scientifically, bats are class: mammals; genus: disgusting rodents. Why allow them to take to the air when those “flightless birds” are wandering around on the ground?

I am disappointed. Birds should not be allowed not to fly; it is a sin of immense proportions. Do you hear that, Mother Nature?

But, sadly, flightless birds aren’t Mother Nature’s only screw-up. Take whales and dolphins and porpoises; they are mammals that never leave the water. Class: mammals; genus: wet. What the hell?

This has caused me distress in front of my grandchildren.

“And the biggest animal in the world is the blue whale. No animal ever was this big. It lives in the ocean.” I said to my lovely granddaughter.

“In the ocean?” she asked, puzzled.

“Yes, it lives in the ocean,” I repeated.

“Isn’t that supposed to be a fish?” said my quizzical grandson.

“Uh, ah, ye, um,” I stammered.

Thanks, Mother Nature! I look like an idiot in front of my grandchildren.

Oscar Hammerstein II blew off science class and then wrote the lyrics, “Fish got to swim, birds got to fly,” I’m with you, Oscar! I don’t want my world to have rodents that fly, birds that don’t, and mammals that never walk the earth. That is not a sane world. Mother Nature has proven herself to be nuts!

My only advice is to avoid explaining this anomaly to your grandchildren.

[Read Frank’s new book Confessions of a Wayward Catholic. Available on Amazon.com, kindle, Barnes and Noble, and at bookstores.]

They Rule the Sky? Yuck, No!

I make no bones about it; I am a lover of the predators: the eagles, the hawks, the falcons. These soaring birds are rulers of the Earth’s heavens. Such magnificent creatures do not just fly, they soar, hunting, always hunting for the fearful creatures these fearsome birds will kill and devour.

Little songbirds, while pretty and often gaily colored, can fly, yes, but they cannot soar high into the sky, they cannot dominate their world. They live lives of terror; flitting from here to there, to mate and to not to get eaten. The energy they expend flying is overwhelming, consistently flap, flap, flapping

In Cape May, New Jersey, my wife, the Beautiful AP and two friends of ours, Martine and Tom, saw hawks of some kind flying over the trees. There had to be at least a dozen of them; one bird soaring after another.

“Oh, man, look at those,” I pointed.

Four pairs of binoculars pointed heavenward to catch these magnificent birds in flight. Ohhhh and they were dominating the sky, watching for prey. Then one flew into the parking lot of the Cape May Preserve, where we were about to get into the car to go to Sunset Beach. This creature hovered over our heads, maybe 10 feet above us.

“My God,” I exclaimed. “What a hawk!” I had no idea what kind of hawk this bird was but nevertheless it was a marvel.

“That’s not a hawk,” said a young woman about to get into her car.

“What is it then?” I asked. “A small eagle?”

“That? Those?” she pointed upward. I nodded. She laughed, “They are Turkey Vultures.”

What the hell? “Huh?” I questioned. “They are hunting though, right?”

“Nah, they don’t hunt. They eat the carrion they find on the roads and in the fields.” She looked closely at my face. “If you feel any better, they don’t eat anything that is putrefying.”

TurkeyVultures? Soaring Turkey Vultures? My world was being turned upside down.

The word turkey is not an appellation signifying supremacy. In the schoolyards of Brooklyn, the borough where I grew up, calling someone a turkey (“Hey, turkeeee!”) is a sign of disrespect.

And the word vulture? Unpleasant at best; totally disgusting at worst. They look it too. Vultures look like what vultures should look like; disgusting. Except these birds didn’t exactly look like vultures until you looked at their faces – those faces were not hunters’ faces; they were the faces of the avian zombie horde.

Before I knew I was watching a turkey vulture, I saw a majestic predator governing the sky.  Once I heard its name, I saw a derelict scavenger searching for an opportunistic meal. It’s the name that makes a difference. “That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” said Shakespeare. As usual, Shakespeare got it right because he knew our species so very well.

[Read Frank’s Confessions of a Wayward Catholic! Available at Amazon.com, kindle, Barnes and Noble, and at bookstores.]

The Hitler Freeze

What happens when a speaker talking to any size audience mentions three of the world’s worst mass murderers, Stalin from the Soviet Union, Mao from China and Hitler from Germany?

Stalin may have murdered upwards of 22 million people. At the mention of Stalin’s name, the people listen intently. At the mention of Mao and his slaughter of some 60 million people, people also listen intently.

And why not? These are horrible crimes of unimaginable scale.

At the mention Hitler and his murder of between 11 and 13 million people – six million of whom were Jews, what happens? People become silenter than silent. It’s hard to tell if people are even breathing.

The word “Hitler” freezes people solid. His name takes the air out of a room. People become transfixed.

What is it about Hitler that brings such a response? Is Hitler in some other category even though he committed fewer murders than Stalin and Mao’s? Or is it something else?

It’s something else.

If any European country, and that means the Western civilized world including the United States, Canada and Australia, can lay claim to being a brilliant one, it is certainly Germany. Germany was the epitome of culture and class in philosophy, science, art, engineering, music. Germany was indeed the brightest light among the lights of the intellectual world.

Russia and China were not in such a class. They were not Western. They were merely the other in the public’s mind; countries that stood outside of the advanced world; countries from which you might possibly expect wholesale slaughter.

How could Germany, now composed of chanting, goose stepping, militaristic concentration camp monsters, espousing their racial superiority and finally instituting the “final solution”—in short, the killing of all the Jews in the world—how could such people be such beasts? How could this great civilization become totally barbaric?

There are reasons. The underlying hate of despised groups can undermine whatever veneer of higher civilization a country might seemingly possess. Despised groups included the Jews, gays, gypsies, and the physically deformed, among others.

But there is another reason for horror. According to Tom Beck, “The Nazis were exporting their terror. With each successive victory that Germany had over other countries, the ‘final solution’ was instituted in those conquered countries. The Nazi killing machine spread across the continent and Hitler made it plain that his ideas would take over the world, as would his slaughter.”

According to Tom, “Those whom Stalin murdered were Soviets; those Mao murdered were Chinese. They did not have a ‘final solution’ for the rest of the world.”

So Hitler, the resplendent ruler of a civilized European country, was able to militarize them not just to fight wars, but to slaughter select groups no matter where those groups resided.

To top it off, the final view of the ‘final solution’ had the Allied soldiers discover the concentration camps and their moribund inhabitants. Our soldiers got to see the horrors Hitler perpetrated, and pictures of these starved men, women and children were shown to the world. In the words from the great horror movie Night of the Living Dead, “They’re coming to get you Barbara!” and, yes, for each one of the despised groups and those of us who would defend such groups, the Nazis were coming to get us.

As a kid I remember when my father had Jewish friends with tattoos on their arms. “What are those tattoos?” I asked him. He looked at me and shook his head, “I’ll tell you when you’re older.” He knew of the horror, as did his friends, and he was trying to spare me.

What my father tried to spare me from is exactly what freezes those hearing Hitler’s name. The Nazi terror is the real monster under all of our beds. It doesn’t just exist in one country; it builds concentration camps beyond its borders. That fact frightens adults and children. “The monster is coming to get you…”

[Buy Frank’s new book Confessions of a Wayward Catholic. Available on Amazon.com, kindle, Barnes and Noble, and at bookstores.]

I was Injured in Cape May

It happened on the 13th hole. Until that moment I was having one of my best games ever. I was stepping backwards to get out of my wife’s way. I didn’t want to interfere with her putt.

The ground seemed level behind me as I stepped, stepped, slowly stepped backwards but the ground wasn’t level. I tripped over a small hilly section, lost my balance and went stumbling backwards and, trying to regain my feet and not fall (accompanied by the laughter of the universe) I swung my arms out; tried to get my feet under me in order to right myself but none of that happened.

I fell (oh, so pathetically) into the bushes surrounding the hole. The damn 13th hole. The unlucky 13th hole.

According to my beloved wife, I went all octopussy, my flailing arms all over the place, with my herky-jerky legs attempting to do the impossible – correcting my fall and regaining my balance.

I hit those bushes hard. Branches cut the back of my neck (one even stuck in there – a small one that still hurt like hell and made me bleed a lot). I slammed my knee to the ground and cut it; my shoulder slammed the bush’s main stem and still hurts me now as I write this.

I was down. I was so down. I was just happy that the entire world was not there to see this “fat man” go down. When fat men fall, it is funny. I know that. I do know that. And you can’t deny that either.

My wife the Beautiful AP came running over to me. I was trying to lift myself up and out of the bushes. “Let me help you,” she said. “Let me help you.”

“I’m fat. I’m heavy,” I said.

“Hey, can I help?” asked a man who came running over to our hole. I was still flopping on the ground trying to stand up.

“Oh, oh, thank you,” said my beautiful wife.

“I’m okay, I’m okay,” I said. I wasn’t okay. I was trying to be okay to diminish the torment of going down and looking idiotic in front of this man.

“I’m a lifeguard,” said the man. He was in great shape. Tanned and good looking. On the other hand, I was fat and flopping-flapping on the ground.

“I’m a lifeguard too,” said my wife.

“I just finished swimming a two and a half mile ocean race,” said the good-looking tanned lifeguard.

“I’m only a pool lifeguard,” said my wife.

“I’m an ocean lifeguard,” said the tanned, good-looking in-shape creep.

“Don’t worry about me,” I said. “I can get myself up.”

So I did get myself up. Despite the tanned, good-looking lifeguard wanting to walk me off the course, I was able to leave without the bastard’s help.

I say this and I say this with all manner of conviction. I will never play miniature golf again!

[Read Frank Scoblete’s Confessions of a Wayward Catholic! Available on Amazon.com, kindle, Barnes and Noble, and at bookstores.]

Should You Place the 5 and 9 at Craps?

There’s been a lot of debate in craps circles about the placing of the 5 and 9, some of it quite intense between the camps that say do and the camps that say don’t.

Well I am now going to settle this thing once and for all – or at least for the next few minutes while you read this. I am dealing with controlled shooters now, not random rollers. No random roller should ever consider placing the 5 or 9 as that four percent house edge is just too darn much to have much of a chance of being ahead in the near future. It might be so near as to be tonight.

If a shooter is reducing the appearance of the 7 he is obviously increasing the appearance of other numbers, maybe not all of the other numbers but certainly some of the other numbers.

Now a controlled shooter has just hit a few 5s (or 9s) in short order. Do you place the 5 in that case? The answer, startlingly, is yes…and no.

Let’s take the “no” first. Is the appearance of those 5s enough to warrant a place bet against that large four percent house edge on a 5 (or 9)? Here is the unexpected answer: Forget that the shooter just rolled those 5s, the question you should ask yourself is this, “Is that shooter’s past results indicative of an ability to overcome a four percent house edge in the future?” The answer to this is usually “No, he isn’t good enough from this point on to overcome edge on the 5.”

It doesn’t matter that he just hit some 5s, you have to look towards his future prospects based on the wealth of his past performance, not based on a few rolls that just happened.

For most dice controllers that settles the issue. DO NOT place bet the 5 and 9. The edge is too high, period.

Now too many novice and intermediate dice controllers have a bloated concept of how good they are. They think, erroneously, that they can overcome the house edge on the 5 because the 5 just showed a few times.

Now let me go to the “yes” place-the-5-side of the argument but first an absolutely important preface:

Kids selectively listen to what teachers say. Take the sex talks that now seem de rigueur in public schools. Teachers say the following, “You shouldn’t have sex but if you are going to have sex use a condom.”

What the kids hear is this: “Have sex.” The rest of the sentence is forgotten.

Craps players also have selective memories. They look for ways to continue stupid betting practices by scrounging around for trend systems, usually the repeating number  system, and other systems that essentially make them losers even if they have developed a controlled throw.

So what I write now is NOT to be selectively remembered. Remember it all or don’t read it.

So unless you are at the tables with a true master of dice control who is getting into a real streak, not an imagined one, then DO NOT place bet the 5 or 9.

And do not selectively remember the above to think it gives you permission to follow the advice of new or intermediate dice controllers or systems advocates. “Have sex” this ain’t!

There is one more point that is somewhat profound. Advantage craps really shouldn’t be looked at in the short run where numbers are appearing and disappearing with great frequency. It should be looked at globally over thousands, hundreds of thousands and perhaps millions of rolls. When it is looked at that way, almost all controlled shooters will make much more money on the 6 and 8; on Come and Pass line bets, than they will on attempting to hop onto short term fluctuations happening now.

So my advice is this: Do not place the 5 and 9. If you wish to go with other numbers use the Come with a minimum of 5X odds. This formula is tried and true. This formula is truly the “keys to the casinos’ money.”

[Read Frank Scoblete’s new book I Am a Dice Controller: Inside the World of Advantage-Play Craps! Available from Amazon.com, kindle, Barnes and Noble, and at bookstores.]

Swan Lake

It was to be an average Sunday birding expedition with our South Shore Audubon Society. There were about 25 people gathered on Merrick Road in Massapequa, New York. At this juncture of Merrick Road, the word “road” is a misnomer as the “road” is more of a parkway and the cars are whooshing by at 50 miles per hour.

That was okay; we were all on the sidewalk looking out over the beautiful Massapequa Lake checking out any one of the 31 species we would see that day.

I caught the event in my peripheral vision and simultaneously heard the woman scream, “Aaaaarrrrrggggghhhh!” A huge Mute Swan, one of those beautiful all-white creatures, had flown over our heads and across Merrick Road, then hit the electric lines and fell onto the road just at the edge of the curb. I saw it drop. The bird moved a little but I was sure it would die. It must have hit those power lines at maximum speed.

Four of our members braved the traffic with Bob yelling, “Don’t cross the road; you’ll get hit.” But committed birders are committed birders, that’s for sure. Four bravehearts, first Bill, who was then joined by Bill. Then Cathy and Anne crossed that road. The first Bill knelt by the bird. The bird moved its legs slightly so it was still alive.

“They had better get that bird onto the sidewalk or some car is going to hit them,” I said to Paul and Bob.

“The bird is dead or it will be dead,” said Paul.

“They were crazy to cross that road,” said Bob.

A car pulled up near us and a grey-haired lady got out. As fate would have it, this lady had just gotten her certificate in animal rescue. She and some of our birders talked and she called the animal rescue society.

“That bird is dead,” I said.

“Dead,” said Paul.

“I know dead when I see it,” I said.

“We’re lucky our guys didn’t get hit by a car,” said Bob.

Bill and Bill and Anne and Cathy lifted the bird to the sidewalk. These Mute Swans are quite large, upwards of four feet sometimes, so it took them a little time to get that bird onto the sidewalk.

“It’s dead,” I said.

“They should throw it into the stream,” said Paul.

“What a way to die,” I said, “slamming into those wires.”

“Those guys were crazy crossing that road,” said Bob shaking his head.

Then the bird moved. It flapped its wings and tried to stand up. Our four birders lifted it. “Let’s get it back to the lake,” one of the four bravehearts said. And so Bill and Bill lifted the bird and started across the road while the grey-haired lady and Kathy and Anne stopped traffic.

As the bird came towards the lake it seemed much better. The men released it and it paused on the banks of the water.

“Man,” I said. “I really thought it was dead.”

“So did I,” Paul said.

“I still wouldn’t have crossed that road,” said Bob.

The bird took to the water and we all burst into applause. You would think this conclusion would have made our day but then…

…another Mute Swan came zipping over – this one was gigantic, much bigger than our injured one.

“Oh, God, no!” shouted one of our birders.

“No! That other swan is going to kill it!” shouted a second woman.

The gigantic Mute Swan aggressively slammed his head right into our swan. A skirmish ensued, but our swan struggled to shore while the gigantic one waited for him to reenter the lake. Our swan stayed put. When the gigantic swan saw that our swan would not head back into the lake, it paddled away but you could see he was still eyeing our swan.

When our swan reentered the lake the gigantic swan came flying over.

“I don’t think our swan can survive another fight,” I said.

“The big swan is going to kill it,” said Paul.

“Our swan should never have gotten back into the water,” said Bob.

“Our swan can’t fly,” I said at the exact same moment our swan took to the air and escaped the gigantic one who, surprisingly, did not follow it.

Joe, our leader, said: “They are territorial. They stake out a section of a lake and will fight any other one from going into their territory. Mute Swans tend to mate for life. Another bird enters its territory at risk.”

Our mute swan survived an awful ordeal.

“I really thought it was dead,” I said.

“So did I,” said Paul.

“I still wouldn’t have crossed the street,” said Bob.

[Read Frank Scoblete’s book Confessions of a Wayward Catholic. Available from Amazon.com, kindle, Barnes and Noble, and at bookstores.]

The Faster the “Worster”

There are two factors that must be considered when analyzing the various casino games, the house edge and speed of the game. The two go together like “love and marriage” and a “horse and carriage.”

A game with a high house edge but very few decisions might actually be better than playing a game with a low house edge but many decisions.

Take a look at the game of mini-baccarat. The house edges on the two main bets of “bank” and “player” are 1.06 percent and 1.24 percent respectively. That means a player can expect to lose $1.06 per $100 wagered on “bank” and $1.24 per $100 wagered on “player.” Sounds great and as house edges go it is great.

Now let us take a look at roulette. The house edge on the American wheel (0 and 00) is a monstrous 5.26 percent. Yikes! That means a player can expect to lose $5.26 per $100 wagered. That is some big loss.

So it is clear that as house edges go, mini-baccarat is overwhelmingly superior to roulette.

Now let’s take a look at the speed of these games. In mini-baccarat a player can face 150 or more decisions per hour on either “bank” or “player.” There is a third bet too but we don’t have to worry about it since we never make it. That is called the “tie” bet coming in with over a 14 percent house edge.

I recently went to the casino and clocked mini-baccarat games. They came in with 140 to 180 decisions per hour. An amazing speed! Now, the minimum bet was $15 (most players were green and black chippers but let’s stick to $15). Let us take 160 decisions per hour.

The player bets $15 for 160 decisions. He bets a total of $2,400 and his expectation is to lose $25.44 on “bank” and $29.76 on “player.” So let’s say we average these two out to make the hourly loss on a $15 bet $27.60.

Now we turn our attention to roulette. The average game (based on my observations) will have approximately 35 decisions per hour (especially at an almost full or completely full table). So multiply $15 times 35 decisions and you get $525 wagered of which the player is expected to lose $27.62 – just about the same as a player at mini-baccarat. So a good house-edge game and a bad house-edge game come in just about the same.

So when you are deciding which games to play and if you want to figure what your losses would be with game “A” and game “B,” it is wise to learn how fast the games are as well. House edge is only one measure. It takes “two to tango” after all.

[Frank Scoblete’s new books are I Am a Dice Controller: Inside the World of Advantage-Play Craps! and I Am a Card Counter: Inside the World of Advantage-Play Blackjack! Available on Amazon.com, kindle, Barnes and Noble, and at bookstores.]

A Chanting We Will Go!

Those of you around in the late 1960s and early 1970s will remember the anti-draft chant of “Hell no, we won’t go!” That chant was heard almost every day at colleges and street protests and during occasional riots.

In the 1930s the chant was: “America first! America first!”

Those of us in labor unions have used many chants as we picketed or protested this, that or the other injustice.

The recent anti-Trump rallies have seen many such chants, some which have been used long before Trump became President. Here are a few (taken from L.V. Anderson’s article “All the Chants I Heard….” from Slate website:)

  • No justice, no peace!
  • My body, my choice!
  • Muslim rights are human rights! (You can replace “Muslim” with any group.)
  • Black lives matter!
  • Education not deportation!
  • Say it loud! Say it clear, refugees are welcome here!
  • Love trumps hate!
  • Whose streets? Our streets!
  • Hey hey! Ho ho! Donald Trump has got to go!
  • Love! Not hate! Makes America great!
  • Donald Trump! Go away! Racist, sexist, anti-gay!

Many of you who are religious know the various chants of your faith. In Buddhism such chants are called mantras.

So why are chants used in protests? Two reasons:

  1. The chants keep people united
  2. The chants stop the chanters from actually thinking

Something said over and over and over again drowns out any other thoughts a person can have. This is an effective tool in meditation because it focuses the mind. Chanting is a thought destroyer that allows leaders to manipulate the chanters.

The next demonstration you attend (or watch on television) please note the faces of the chanters. Do they reflect deeply held thoughts and reasoned opinions? Or do they reflect the exact opposite?

[Read my book Confessions of a Wayward Catholic! Available at amazon.com, kindle, Barnes and Noble, and at bookstores.]