Tag: Scoblete

Trump: The Art of the Steal

 

Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series (now 25 books!) has a hero who is closer to a superhero or to Tarzan than to an ordinary man. I am guessing that many American men who read these books (such as yours truly) wouldn’t mind being Jack Reacher even for a day.

Is it possible, perhaps even likely, that the President of the United States, Donald Trump, would also like to be Reacher? Is it possible that he stole Jack Reacher’s demeanor and evinced it during the recent protests? Did he borrow a litany of ideas from the second novel in the Reacher series titled Die Trying?

Read these quotes from Die Trying and then hear President Trump echo these very sentiments.

…need to get some dominance here. Situation like this, it’s very important…. Just do it okay? (page 64, Kindle edition)

…gain the upper hand. Establish dominance. Classic siege theory. (page 341, Kindle edition)

…kiss goodbye any hope of dominance. That was to lie down and roll over. From that point on you are their plaything. (page 341, Kindle edition)

A few weeks ago Trump wanted to use the United States military to “dominate” protesters and he seems to have also desired a dominating “occupying force” in America cities.

He tongue-lashed the governors of those states experiencing rioting and looting, telling them they were fools and jerks. “If you don’t dominate, you’re wasting your time. They’re going to run over you, You are going to look like a bunch of jerks. You have to dominate.” (Business Insider, June 2, 2020)

Later that same day Trump ordered that the protesters outside the White House were to be disbursed by tear gas and rubber bullets. It turned out that this was simply a method to clear the way for a photo session with a dominating Trump holding a Bible outside St. John’s Episcopal Church at Lafayette Square. The next day he and Melania stood reverently in front of the statue of John Paul II. What was the message he was sending?

Is Trump trying to be Jack Reacher? Has he bought into the idea that using the military might of America against Americans upholds the American way?

Does he want to dominate because he thinks not doing so makes him a fool and a jerk?

Did Trump’s tongue lashing of the Governors come straight out of a Jack Reacher novel?  Is Trump actually preparing a new book titled The Art of the Steal?

Get Frank’s articles in your email. Sign up today.

Qualifying Events

Casino players are always trying to figure out when is the best or most propitious or most advantageous time to place their wagers. Should I wait for two blacks to appear in roulette before I bet red since red is now due? Or should I wait for two blacks to appear before I bet black since black is hot and may continue to be hot? If numbers appear in one column on the roulette layout, should I bet that column or jump to a different column? Decisions, decisions.

Whatever system a player uses to determine the correct time for wagering is called a “qualifying” event. As with the myriad number of players, there are a myriad number of qualifying events that can be used to determine the appropriate time to risk one’s money on Lady Luck’s largesse. And let us not kid ourselves, qualifying events herald winners and losers based on Lady Luck’s whim.

Are qualifying events real? Obviously, yes. But are such events in the various games an indicator that the player has the edge over the house at that moment? Sadly, almost all qualifying events have no impact on the house edges of the various games. Bet red; bet black; bet the first column; bet high, bet low, none of it matters how you arrived at your decision because luck determines the outcome and math determines the house edge.

A player’s luck is no match for the math of the house edge whether the player uses a qualifying event or whether a player just dumps his money on the table helter skelter and calls out, “I’ll bet every number on the craps table!”

Still there is one thing these qualifying events tend to have in common; they slow down the total number of wagers the players make and thus using such events will slow down the rate of loss for those players even though the house edge remains the same.

So let’s take a look at some methods players have used for qualifying when and how to bet.

At many casino games players use a trend-betting system. If two, three or more of the same event occurs, one can bet that same event continuing or against that same event continuing. You see this clearly in the roulette examples above. But variations of this will work with blackjack and other card games as well.

In blackjack if you see that the dealer has busted once or twice or three times in a row, you jump into the game figuring he will bust again. This is called following a positive trend. However, if he doesn’t bust you can figure he will bust on the next hand and jump into the game. Or you can figure he won’t bust and you stay out of the game. You can also decide to raise or lower your bets as you play based on such trends as high cards coming out together, low cards coming out together, a combination of high and low cards coming out together, the dealer getting two blackjacks in a row, the dealer getting two hands of 20 in a row and so on.

In baccarat, Pai Gow poker, Caribbean Stud, Let It Ride, Three-Card poker and many of the other “carnival games,” you can sit out hands and use a trend-betting system to determine when to jump into the fray. There is no rule that you have to play each and every hand so sitting out and waiting for your qualifying event is a mathematically smart move.

During a game you can raise your bet if you have won several hands in a row (you determine what constitutes “several”) or lower your bet if you have lost several hands in a row. Of course, you can also lower your bet if you have won several hands in a row since that might mean you must lose the upcoming hand. You can also raise your bet if you have lost several hands in a row figuring, “I have to win sometime!”

At craps, there is a host of qualifying events that you can use to decide which numbers or propositions to wager. If several Crazy Crapper bets such as the 2, 3, 11, or 12 have been rolled, you can jump on this trend thinking these numbers are getting hot. You can decide to bet multi-bet Crazy Crapper bets such as the Whirl, the Horn, or the C&E if such groups of numbers seem to be showing a lot.

If you are looking for a qualifying event to actually start betting at craps, many players like the shooter to make a point before they bet. Some players take the bull by the horns (what sane individual would ever take a bull by the horns?) and ask the dealers before cashing in, “Is this table hot or cold?” If the dealer says, “Hot,” the player jumps in figuring the table will stay hot or he can choose not to jump in figuring the table must therefore get cold.

Card counters at blackjack use a simple formula to determine when to raise and lower their bets. If the game favors them at a given moment owing to which cards have been played, the card counter bets more. If the game favors the house at that moment they bet less. This is the only qualifying system that actually works to give the player the edge.

So to qualify this column, qualifying events can be a fun way to play but they will rarely give you any kind of edge.

 

 

Frank Scoblete’s web site is frankscoblete.com. His books are available at Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, kindle, e-books and at bookstores. Get Frank’s articles by e-mail!

 

 

 

 

A Second Virus Attacks!

The coronavirus has caused the world to turn upside down and inside out. My travels have been interrupted; no casinos in the last two months; no trips outside the country either. My wife the Beautiful AP and I are having a sedate life at the moment—the most sedate life of our lives. Our lives now revolve around our home, our pets and Zoom calls.

Our village is quite quiet now. We are stepping back in time to an older, finer world.

Except:

There is a second virus out there; a hideous one, perhaps more hideous than even the coronavirus. It is called the carownervirus (pronounced car-owner-virus) and it entails humans removing the mufflers from their cars and speeding on New York’s highways and boulevards.

Intermittently during the mornings, the days, the evenings and the middle of the night when I get up for a refreshing urinary expulsion, I hear them zooming in the distance as they race one another. The closest parkway is about two miles away but even so that mufflerless cacophony assails my ears.

Who are these life-forms that think removing mufflers and stepping down on a gas pedal makes them special? Are they believers in the idiom I am loud, therefore I am? Are they the adult version of those beings that spent years trying to ruin the educations of all the other kids who wanted to learn something? Is it true that the young idiot usually grows into an older idiot? I do ponder these questions.

The carownervirus might be here (hear) to stay as the infected take over the roads while healthy people hunker down to avoid catching or releasing the coronavirus.

Perhaps those infected by the carownervirus will even have their own PPE uniforms to wear: short-sleeved T-shirts with a pack of unfiltered cigarette rolled up in one sleeve, adorned with gold chains dangling from their necks, along with greased hair and leather jackets bearing their gang’s name (Misfits!).

Will their saying now become for all time, “Hey, Daddy-o! What’s happening?” And when all our lives settle into a new normal, will we be challenged to a perpetual drag race each time we venture on the open road?

I know what I’ll say when I am challenged: “Sorry sir, but I have a bowl of goldfish on the front seat.”

Frank Scoblete’s books are available on Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, kindle, e-books and at bookstores. Receive Frank’s articles in your email box. Sign up today.

Unsocial Media

I’ve been called a communist, a socialist, a Nazi, a Trumpite, a Trumparine. a never-Trumper; a lefty, a right winger, a UFO denier, a tool of the Dr. Fauci and Bill Gates’ conspiracy, a lover of Hillary Clinton, a Republican, a Democrat, a disgrace to Italians, an idiot, a moron, a cretin, an enemy of Our Lord, an anti-Christian, an atheist, an evolutionist, a destroyer of America, a slave owner and today’s most powerful expletive: racist.

I am a liberal tool to expand the Democratic tax thefts, but I must be a greedy Republican, because I think it is a good thing to make money.

My friends of all political persuasions, religions, non-religions and colors have been attacked. I especially love the Jews who are trying to destroy the world (for various reasons) and have been since they came into existence when Adam and Eve ate the apple (it was a fig folks, not an apple). I am also a dumb figgest.

I support the Asians who are taking over the country. I want China to take over because I hate Caucasians. I am a white supremacist, also a traitor to my white race, a beastialist, a privileged white male even though I once lived in a cold water flat for six years as a child and started working at the age of nine. I am a misogynist. I do not know anything about the vagina. I am a subjugator of women. I must have a small penis.

I do not obviously know how to read the secret messages of the Illuminati or understand that Sandy Hook never happened. I am a Catholic; an anti-Catholic, an evangelical, an evil denier of the plain creationist truth and I evidently have no common sense. How can I deny the Kennedy conspiracy? I am a jerk because I don’t think face masks kill people or that Covid-19 is a hoax. I am an “N” lover.

I am probably a Satanist and denier of the eternal truths of the bible.   I am an anti-vaxxer. A populist. An elitist. A sexist. A feminist lackey and probably a rapist. I don’t think GMOs are unhealthy and that means I am “as stupid as an idiot.” I should be ashamed of myself because I don’t think the word “organic” means what a lot of people think it means. I am a sad example of a man who can’t figure out that the world is actually flat.

Therefore, I am never going onto social media again. Well, at least for the next few months, as it is a scary world of hyper-sensitive, tense, threatening, and angry extremists. For them, lashing out is a relatively calm behavior.  Threatening bodily harm is par for their course if you attempt to engage them in discussions.

You might think that I debated these ploppies over the course of the last month on the weird and wacky world of social media but you would be mistaken. The most I did was ask for real evidence of whatever claims a person made. A simple, “prove it,” could bring down the house as most people thought their arguments were self-evident. But I became the monster who dared ask for reasons to support their beliefs. Yikes, I never should have done that!

Now, I am taking a break from unsocial media.

Frank Scoblete’s website is www.frankscoblete.com. His books are available on Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, kindle, e-books and at bookstores.

“Birdman” Robert Stroud Ain’t Burt Lancaster

Robert Stroud was a convicted murderer, later to become a famous ornithologist and author, who was known as “the birdman of Alcatraz” for his work in diagnosing bird diseases.  A movie starring the great actor Burt Lancaster was made about Stroud’s life which was – take a guess – titled The Birdman of Alcatraz.

Lancaster was an actor who simultaneously exuded strength and gentleness. He was also quite handsome and female fans were devoted to him. Just like Cary Grant, Lancaster had been a circus acrobat and his body and movements showed this even as he aged. His portrayal of Stroud was brilliant and earned him an Academy Award nomination as best actor. His was a riveting performance.

Except Burt Lancaster’s performance had little to do with the real Robert Stroud. The real Stroud was like the Japanese bird monster Rodan to a pretty songbird who was Lancaster’s Stroud. Burt Lancaster’s Stroud was indeed strong in many ways and did challenge authority when it could be shown (in the film) that such authority was abusive.

In real life Robert Stroud was a psychopathic murderer, an unapologetic and vicious pimp, and a lover of chaos and struggle. He constantly fought and badgered the people he met and in prison he was no different; in fact, he might have been worse. You could say he was the top bird of prison fights, physical ones and verbal ones. His face was the sneer, not the smile.

Stroud didn’t like authority, that’s true; he also didn’t seem to like anyone at all. But he loved to argue and fight with fellow prisoners, with the prison guards and with the administrators. He even murdered a prison guard! This was not a Burt Lancaster type of man; women would not be fans of his. Homicidal pimps are certainly not good role models.

Stroud spent most of his prison career in solitary confinement. The other inmates hated him; they also feared him because of his mercurial personality. You never knew when an explosion would occur and they occurred often enough to keep everyone near him on their toes. In fact, had people near him been birds, they would have taken to the air.

Yes, we do owe this man a “thank you” for his groundbreaking work with birds. His books have been a great help for veterinarians and birders too; but we shouldn’t let a movie whitewash the awful facts. The prison psychiatrist labeled him a psychopath and indeed he seems to have been one.

The movie was good but the man was for the birds.

Frank Scoblete’s web site is www.frankscoblete.com. His books are available on Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, kindle, e-books and at bookstores.

Die, Death, Diets

Donald Trump is in big trouble if what I think might happen, actually happens.

You can plainly see that the people who are protesting in the streets to reopen the economy—most of whom fully support Trump, as their signs clearly show—are older Americans, many of them in the most threatened category from the coronavirus. That’s right, these protesters most of whom do not wear masks or practice social distancing, are leaving themselves wide open for contracting this devastating virus.

Most look as if they are over 60 years of age and plenty of them look as if they have underlying health problems—certainly obesity being an obvious one. (Okay, now don’t get sarcastic and say their main health problem is mental.) As Trump supporters in states where the 2016 election was close, a small percentage of his followers catching the virus, being put out of commission or actually dying could seriously hurt Trump’s chances of getting reelected.

Now if you are a Democrat you should encourage Republican states and governors, and those people in closely contested states, to demand reopening of everything. The smart Republicans will realize why Democrats want this and will resist. The dumb Republicans will be going to the movies.

But are enough Republicans smart enough to see what is happening?

Are Democrats clever enough to trick the Republicans into destroying Trump’s chances at reelection by helping to kill off his voters?

This time period in our country’s history could be a do or die one for Donald Trump.

Death

What do Presidents Washington, Lincoln, Monroe, Jackson, Grant, Garfield, Teddy Roosevelt, and Kennedy have in common? Malaria; the most dreaded mosquito-borne disease in the history of the world. Malaria has killed more human beings than any other mosquito-borne disease.

There are 14,000 mosquitoes for every one person on earth. And they trouble me greatly because they are the biggest pain in my neck and everywhere else on me, and I don’t have any plans of being President.

Mosquitoes love me and that means they love to bite me; they’ve even bitten me through my clothes. I’ve used various repellents but none seems to actually work. I hesitate to go outdoors early in the morning or at dusk because those are the times mosquitoes are out flapping around looking for nourishment; meaning my blood. That is also the time they look for mates. By the way, the mosquitoes that do all this biting and spreading of disease are the female ones. (This proves to misogynists that you can’t trust women because they are after your blood.)

And finally, here’s what really bothers me about these buggers—the warmer planet Earth gets, the nastier mosquitoes might be as warm weather tends to bring them out. Between new viruses and old enemies, it is likely we’re in for a tough future.

Diet

During this pandemic, I have seen the lines of people at supermarkets and at food pantries. Some people are having a hard time getting food delivered to their homes or apartments as well. I have a simple solution to the delivery-of-food problem: Nutrisystem!

For about $300 a month Nutrisystem will deliver three meals a day to your abode.  You’ll have enough to eat to survive and if you are a larger-than-life person (okay, if you are fat), you might also lose some weight in the bargain.  Maybe you’ll get Marie Osmond to deliver the food!

Frank Scoblete’s web site is www.frankscoblete.com. His books are available at Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, kindle, e-books and at bookstores.

Irritations

I know I am a grumpy old man, but unlike other grumpy old men I am right in my opinions. That makes all the difference in the world.

***Kars for Kids keeps running its free ad on the radio and sometimes on television. The ad is a simple one; a horrible, mind-numbing ear-worm of a jingle about giving your used, abused, crappy old car to their organization as a charitable contribution. Whoever wrote that jingle and/or arranged the music and/or hired those “children of the damned” to sing the jingle should have something horrible happen to them. Go check out that charity on the Internet and I think you will find it isn’t what you think it is.

***Gold and silver: Here’s another commercial that is constantly irritating me – and I’ve written about this idea a few times but it needs repeating. You take a former star actor, in this case William Devane, and have him spout off about how he votes in elections and how America was strong in the past and basically could kick everybody’s ass. He stands on a battleship to spew his company’s products.

He tells us about the rotten paper money that’s out there and tells us that he invests in gold and silver and he also votes. You can buy these precious metals too. Why would the company he’s hawking sell gold and silver to the rest of us saps and take our crummy almost-worthless money when they have two metals far, far more valuable than the money we are sending them for their gold and silver? Does that make sense to you? Why don’t they keep their gold and silver?

Here’s the pitch: “Send my company your rotten money and we will send you precious gold and silver and, yes, my friends, America will still be able to kick everyone else’s ass. You can bank on that!”

***Vice President versus President? I think the nominee of the Democratic Party for Vice President will actually be the person running against President Trump. Biden is a non-issue in this election. Most people that I have spoken to don’t think Biden will finish his term as President if he wins or he will gradually become the invisible man in the White House.

By the way, Biden looks like the actor Jeff Morrow in the movie This Island Earth. Check out a picture of him!

***I hate the car commercials that always tell you about their special prices and their constant great sales events. Their sales always say that they are giving a huge discount from the “manufacturer’s standard retail price.” Has any car ever been sold at the “manufacturer’s standard retail price?” So you get a discount on a make-believe price that has never been charged to a buyer. Isn’t this as fraud?

***Also about car commercials and real drivers: My wife, the Beautiful AP and I were driving on the parkway to go to a supermarket to buy some food. Given the coronavirus, there were very few cars on the road and those that were there, the drivers were speeding like crazy. The Beautiful AP said, “At those speeds there will be accidents even on relatively empty roads.”

On the way home there it was; a huge three-car accident and it looked as if some people were seriously hurt as their cars were mashed.

The car commercials often praise speed. Enough please! Those idiots speeding risk their own lives but also the lives of innocent drivers.

***And speaking of coronavirus, who are the idiots risking their own and everyone else’s lives by going outside in groups without staying a safe distance from other people? They risk other people’s lives too.

And those idiots are similar to the idiots in your classroom who made it difficult for teachers to teach their lessons. Now those same idiots are on the road, not ruining knowledge for everyone in class, but potentially ruining everyone’s lives.

***Speaking of idiots: What’s with these religious fanatics and their ministers and rabbis and imams who insist on holding services with a congregation in their houses of worship (make that houses of potential death) during the coronavirus outbreak? This is not a religious issue and no one is trying to destroy a religion during the coronavirus pandemic; it is a public health issue that affects everyone, including all the millions of people who are not involved in such religions. Your congregants should stay home and out of your churches and temples.

One televangelist claimed to have “blown the wind of God” at the virus and he asserted that with all the Christians in the country praying, the virus has now been defeated.

Israel had to cordon off the town of Bnei Brak because the ultra-orthodox townsfolk of the area refused to obey the mitigation efforts to stop the spread of the virus. They kept holding their services. Of the 200,000 people in the town 75,000 have already tested positive for the coronavirus at this time. Don’t let these people out. They are clearly dangerous to the rest of the citizenry of Israel.

In Pakistan, Muslim clerics refuse to stop massive prayer gatherings and there is real fear that such gatherings could spell doom for controlling the spread of the virus.

Enough of the idiocy; follow the right thing to prevent the virus from attacking countless people. Your religion is safe but the rest of us want to be safe too. Every believer who sanctimoniously struts about after attending these dangerous services is a threat to everyone they cross. Anyone who dies because of them means these holy-folk have committed murder.

PS: The same applies to those fools who partied on the beaches of America during spring break and the ploppies who held coronavirus parties (yes, people did this!). May they dance their way into an ICU that’s out of respirators.

***I now look at some political celebrities and affix a different career and/or character for them.

Donald Trump: the ever-yabbering time-shares salesman.

Mike Pence: the solemn funeral director.

Joe Biden: your strange uncle who sits in the corner at Thanksgiving looking at everyone because he’s forgotten everyone’s name.

Al Sharpton: a flesh-eating zombie.

Bill O’Reilly: your strange uncle who is always interrupting everyone at Thanksgiving to explain why he is right and everyone in that room and on this planet is wrong.

Andrew Cuomo: the toughest kid in the neighborhood.

Dr. Anthony Fauci: the truly deserving King of the Earth.

Dr. Deborah Birx: the truly deserving Queen of Earth

Joe Scarborough: high school senior who thinks he knows women.

Adam Schiff: your strange bug-eyed uncle who sits in the corner at Thanksgiving whispering to himself.

Rand Paul: Dr. No.

Mitch McConnell: the butcher who enjoys slicing bloody meat.

Ruth Bader Ginsberg: the immortal Hobbit.

AOC (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez): one of the three witches in Macbeth.

Ilhan Omar: one of the three witches in Macbeth.

Rashida Tlaib: one of the three witches in Macbeth.

Nancy Pelosi: Lady Macbeth in Macbeth.

Ted Cruz: Macbeth in Macbeth.

Bernie Sanders: King Lear in King Lear.

Sean Hannity: Claudius in Hamlet.

Hillary Clinton: Gertrude in Hamlet.

Melania Trump: Ophelia in Hamlet.

Bill Maher: the jester in King Lear.

John Oliver: Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Good Books Defeat Virus

So you’ve been wandering through your house or apartment, looking to elevate your life from this coronavirus pandemic that has changed everything for every one of us. If you have kids you are at the stage where you are considering building a catapult and shooting them into “the wild blue yonder.”

Stop! I think I can help you, and maybe even your pre-jettisoned kids, by offering a reading and viewing list for you to check out. Most of the books are available on kindle or e-books but one isn’t – but so what? A good read is worth a good amount of money!

Wings for My Flight: the Peregrine Falcons of Chimney Rock by Marci Cottrell Houle (available on kindle): My favorite bird book of the 61 I’ve read thus far. It is a gripping true-life story. I’ve read it twice.

Wesley the Owl by Stacey O’Brien (available on kindle): A woman, an owl, and love. A fun, heartwarming and instructive story about the saving grace between a human and an avian. My second favorite bird book.

The next books are in no particular order but all of them are worth a read:

The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman (available on kindle): If you have a parrot, you know how intelligent birds can be. This book will take you through the best and brightest of the winged world.

Fastest Things on Wings: Rescuing Hummingbirds in Hollywood by Terry Masear (available on kindle): Hummingbirds are amazing creatures but life in the big city can be rough on them. Terry tells fascinating tales of how she has worked to save hundreds of birds in deep danger.

The Delightful Horror of Family Birding by Eli J. Knapp (available on kindle): He loves birds; he loves his kids. This book combines them.

A Season on the Wind: Inside the World of Spring Migration by Kenn Kaufman (available on kindle): The farthest I ever drove was eight hours, a few hundred miles in total. Now look at how far birds can go – amazing! This book shows you what migration is all about. I would never have made it as a bird.

Mrs. Moreau’s Warbler: How Birds Get Their Names by Stephen Moss (available on kindle): I have always been fascinated by names. This book is a fun read that explores where our favorite birds came to be called what they are called.

Birds of Prey: Hawks, Eagles, Falcons and Vultures of North America by Pete Dunne with Kevin T. Karlson (available on kindle): I make no bones about it; I love raptors! They own the sky. They are the true royalty of birds. Pete Dunne takes us right inside their world.

Birds’ Eggs by Michael Walters: No, kids, these are not eggs to be thrown on Halloween. Eggs come in all colors and varieties. Beautiful look at the beginnings of a bird’s life.

Visit Frank’s web site at www.frankscoblete.com. His books are available on Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, kindle, e-books and at bookstores.

 

 

 

“Not everything in this world is nice.”

 

Long Island, New York, March 2020

We are on lockdown. The coronavirus is rampaging through New York State and the City is the hardest hit area in the country. We have to stay in our house but we can still go food shopping or to the doctor’s office or the hospital if we catch the virus. The more we go out, the better the chance we’ll catch this virus.

I turned to my wife, the Beautiful AP, and said: “I don’t remember anything like this. It’s like being in a science fiction book. The entire world is affected by a virus. It’s horrifying.”

“I’m thrown,” she said. “I don’t feel like myself. We’ve read about stuff like this happening but I never thought it would happen here.”

“This has spooked me,” I said.

“It’s spooked everyone.”

Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, 1953

I’m playing outside my father’s store at 7007 Third Avenue. I’m six years old, about to be seven.

There’s Lento’s Restaurant on the corner of Third and Ovington avenues; then Todd’s clothing store, then my father’s store, then a dry cleaners and then a grocery store, then Bedell’s pet shop. Across the street are Trunz Bakery and a new pizza parlor that just opened. Pizza was 15 cents a slice. I fell in love with pizza.

The grocery store had just been sold to a group of men who had accents just like many of the men in our neighborhood. But these men were not Italian or Irish or Norwegian like many of the men who had accents. The Norwegians owned the two delicatessens near us. They were very tall and blonde. And there were Pole-axe people in the neighborhood too.

We sat in the backyard yesterday. We have a beautiful deck that we rarely use. We wanted to get some sun. It was a pleasant day, about 60 degrees. We took two Coleman camping chairs outside. We have no furniture on the deck. Why bother? We might sit outside four times in a year. I get the best views of outdoors from my office which is three quarters windows. I spend a lot of hours in my office.

I have three fish tanks in my office: a 20-gallon, a 55-gallon and a 205-gallon. I love fish and have since I was a child.

I bought fish from Bedell’s. My mother always said to me, “You can have one small tank but when you grow up you can have as many tanks as you want.”

I wanted a lot of tanks.

The men who owned the grocery store were quiet. They had crummy-looking tattoos on their arms too; just like Kaplan the butcher, whose store was down the block on 72 Street and Third Avenue. Kaplan the butcher was not quiet. He joked around and complained about everything, even his customers. “They are always complaining and complaining about this, that and everything.”

He and my father were good friends. Kaplan the butcher would always say, “Your father is a great man, Frankie, a great man. Remember that.”

The new owners of the grocery store were very friendly to my father. But they did not talk a lot. A couple of times I saw their wives entering or leaving the grocery store. They were quiet too. I would wave to them and they would wave back. They didn’t smile. They had those tattoos on their arms too, usually covered up. They were the first women I ever saw with tattoos.

I asked my friend Stevie G. about those tattoos. He said, “They were in the Navy. All sailors get tattoos. My uncle has one too but my uncle’s is a woman bending over. It proves they were in the Navy.”

But were women in the Navy? I didn’t know.

One morning I asked my father, “The tattoos those men and Kaplan the butcher have. They are so ugly, just numbers and a letter or two. Why did they get them?”

My father looked at me for a few moments. I was six years old, going on seven.  “Frankie, you are right, they are ugly tattoos. They show us that not everything in this world is nice.”

 

Frank Scoblete’s web site is www.frankscoblete.com. His books are available on Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, kindle, e-books and at bookstores.

 

Gambling with Coronavirus

 

The estimates for how many people will get the coronavirus range from 40 percent to 80 percent. This is the worldwide estimate. Based on our current knowledge of the disease, approximately two percent of the people who get this virus will die.

At first you might think that two percent is a very low number and that we really have nothing to worry about. Not so. Two percent is a large number.

Let us split the difference between 40 and 80 percent of world population getting the virus and calculate the deaths from those numbers. We’ll say 60 percent of the world will be infected. Since there are 7.5 billion people on earth, then 4.5 billion people will get the disease and with a two percent death rate that translates into 90 million people dying.

In blackjack, an advantage player using card counting can expect to earn between one-half and 1.5 percent of the money he wagers. Yes, casinos will throw out a card counter for having that kind of edge over them. Big money can be earned with such a small edge over the casino. So what sounds small is not really all that small. Two percent is a big number.

If your expectation is to die two percent of the time when you switch on a light; you’d probably forgo switching lights on. If you can expect to die two percent of the time when you turn on your car, you’d probably take up walking.

And 90 million people is certainly no small number of deaths.

The population of the United States is 330 million. If 60 percent get the virus that means 198 million Americans will catch it, of which approximately 3,960,000 will die.

Obviously it is important to do everything possible to slow the spread of this virus. A vaccine will take at least a year to get on the market and we have no idea if any of the “anti-virals” about which folks have been talking will work on this disease.

It is up to each one of us, including those sad excuses for intelligent beings partying in the parks, on the beaches, and on the boats, to take seriously the threat to 330 million Americans and those 7.5 billion people on our planet. Distance yourselves, wash your hands, and follow the advice of those who know a lot more about pandemics than we do.

Frank Scoblete’s web site is www.frankscoblete.com. His books are available on Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, kindle, e-books and at bookstores.