A GAMBLER’S LIFE

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PROF ISAAC GALISTEIN

On Gambling, and what it means

To gamble is to do something with an uncertain outcome and hope you will be better off at the end of it. To most people this does, of course, mean gambling money on some event, from horse racing to roulette.
Get hooked, and you’ve got a problem. Gambling can consume your very being, and the end result is total ruin, financially and personally. But why is it that we can so easily get hooked on gambling?

Perhaps because it is essential to life and the meaning of the universe.

The stars, the planets, even those tiny particles, only exist because of a unique and fortuitous balance. If it had been just a fraction different, life would not have evolved.
We put it down to chance, as if this means something scientific. But the reality is, ‘chance’ is a magical word. We know it happens, but we have no idea how or why. But it does mean that chance is in everything, and therefore everything is a gamble.

Gambling, you see, is an attempt to manipulate chance.

And in this sense, every action, every event, every breath you take is grounded in gambling, and the hope that the odds will be on your side. Indeed, if you think of eastern philosophies, and ideas such as the I Ching, chance is endemic to many religious forms.
If you successfully seem to manipulate chance, you are said to be lucky, yet here a touch of science can come to the rescue. It seems, dear reader, that ‘lucky’ people are better than others at calculating odds. Hence, their success is actually reasonable.
Unless, of course, you’re one of those non-lucky lucky people who simply forget the failures and remember only the successes. Now what’s the chance of you being one of those?
And the odds are at 10-1 ….

Copyright © Protected, March 2008

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STAIRWAY TO …

Stairway, stairway, stairway to
all we desire of me and you;
all our secrets are kept up there,
under the gaze of an omnipotent stare;
we laugh and smile and sometimes cry,
under that ever watching eye;
with birth we take our very first breath,
and rest comfortable in sheets, a long way from death;
when ill we seek comfort above,
and sleep peaceful as a lark or a dove;
in adolescence it’s the place of all our dreams,
at least, at that time it seems;
and it’s true, as dreams turn into reality,
and with a partner we reach pure ecstasy;
but as age marches on, the stairway is longer,
to climb, and so often our mind does wander;
then also up there, death is nigh,
and we think of soaring to heaven so high,
and at last we understand that observant,
ethereal eye

(c) Anthony North, March 2008

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