Joe, whether it covers the Civil War or not, I suggest you read the Confederate Constitution. I’m quoting Article IV, Section 3, paragraph 3:
Seeing as how it was written into the Constitution, I find it hard to believe that it wasn’t something that “they weren’t going to put into practice”.
This reminds me of an experience I had at the grocery store near where I work. I was low-carbing, so I had a tendency to just order small amounts of lunchmeat and cheese when I hadn’t been able to bring my lunch. I went in one day and asked the clerk, who appeared to be a guy in his late 20’s/early 30’s, for a third of a pound of roast beef.
He slices up some roast beef and turns to throw it on the scale, and it comes up as 0.40 lbs. I was about to tell him that it was OK that it was a little over, but before I could get the words out, he turns back to the slicer and starts cutting some more. I said “Excuse me, I only wanted a third of a pound.”
He turns around and SNARLS at me “Well, I don’t know what a third is!”
:eek:
I told him that it was 0.33 on the scale. I weep for humanity.
Did he flunk basic math or something? I don’t like fractions either(though I know the basic ones), but I have no problem converting them to decimal beyond a certain point.(I can grasp .28 far better then 9/32).
[QUOTE=CalMeacham]
If it really was true that casinos “do not make money when you lose”, you could open a casino where you get to keep your money if you “lose”, but the casino picks up its profit by sneakily shafting the winners. Think of the draw! QUOTE]
Dear Group Mind,
I’m surprised that I came home to find not one pounce upon the line that I thought was unclear. Maybe they’re still coming, so I’ll mend it here:
In the line where I said “true odds are 1-6, but I’m paying you 1-4” I should have said “true odds are one out of six, I’m paying you four to one” That is, winning will get you back the dollar you risked, plus four more.
And now, Mr CalMeacham, on to the point which you bring up:
What I mean when I say that the casino makes money when you win, not when you lose, is this:
Let’s look at the full spread of possible outcomes for the dice example:
Say you pick “five”. For six games, on average, you can expect
Dice Outcome
1 lose $1
2 lose $1
3 lose $1
4 lose $1
5 win $4 (five dollar payout, minus the dollar you spent to play)
6 lose $1
So over the long run, you can expect to get $5 back for every $6 you spend. If I were to pay out at the true odds, you’d be winning six dollars for every six dollars spent. It would be an even game. As it is, with the five dollar payout, paying you one dollar less than “fair”, I have what is called a “house percentage” of 1/6, 16%.
That’s the profit that I refer to when I say how the casino makes it’s money. Did I do better this time? (-:
And, if any of us feel a little fuzzy in the head when we try to comprehend probability mathematics, we shouldn’t feel like the Lone Ranger. Probability problems are some of the hairiest concepts! Anybody who’s read Marilyn Vos Savant’s column and remembers the famous Great Debate over the “Monty Hall Paradox” can vouch for that. And consider the fact that if we take any group of 24 people, odds are more likely than not that two of them will have the same birthday. And then there’s the brain teaser that goes “Mrs. Johnson has two children. One of them is a girl. What are the odds that both of them are girls?”
Someday, when I’m in a mood to sit back and watch a really good fight, I might pose the “Monty Hall Paradox” in Great Debates. I’d hate to do that to the moderators, though…
And finally, the American Library Association’s banned books list may be found here . Sorry if I sent anybody on a needle in a haystack search…
Coming next week: “Is sex permissible with one consenting amoeba ?”
Peace and Love and granola bars be with you,
Hosiah
I live in Canada, in Northern Alberta. My aunt, who emigrated from Ireland to Australia when she married, decided to visit us one summer. She had written to my mother (her sister) to ask a few questions. She honestly believed that she should bring her warmest clothes, that we all lived in igloos and that we had a dog team staked out in the yard! She was quite amazed when she stepped off the plane and it was HOT! And there was no snow, and we had A CAR! It just floors me how many people from other countries think that we have no modern conveniences, or that we don’t have snow all year round. There was a show on a few years back where the interviewer asked questions of Americans like “Who is the Prime Minister of Canada?” A lot of people guessed Wayne Gretzky…
QUOTE=Little Nemo]Look Away!: A History of the Confederate States of America by William C. Davis is a good recent general history of the CSA. Davis is a professor of Civil War Studies at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and a three time winner of the Jefferson Davis Prize for Confederate History, so he’s no South basher.
[/QUOTE]
I think I’ve seen that at Books A Million. I have a few books lined up to read (Dancing Wu Li Masters, Art of War, Catch 22) so it may be a while before I have a chance to read it, but I’ll keep an eye open for that one. Of course now that I’m reading a book called “Facts the Historians Leave Out”, I have to wonder which books are leaving facts out, and which ones are just interpretting something differently or think about something differently. Gah. A person could go nuts thinking about stuff like this.
I think you misunderstood me. I know that the constitution protected slavery, and that many people in the south practiced slavery (and intended on continueing to do so), but around half of the soldiers of the soldiers in the confederate army didn’t own slaves, and I doubt that they were all planning on buying a slave as soon as they returned from the war, so no, I don’t think many of the soldiers were planning on practicing slavery, though many were.
If what I said didn’t make a lot of sense, maybe I misunderstood what you said. I’m going to come out and say it: I’m not a smart man, but damnit, I try, which is more than you can say than many other people out there.
Anyways, I’ve been reading more of the book, and it does seem like slavery played a large part, but I think many people have misinterpretted why the confederate army was fighting. The north was the main supplyer of slaves to the south, and when they were going to seriously cripple the south by taking away there rights to own slaves without paying them back. Plus, as I pointed out before, slavery was protected by the constitution. Slavery was evil, there’s no denying that, but the north was hardly in the right either in the Civil War. both sides were fighting for what they beleived in. The North was fighting to keep the south from seceding from the union and to abolish slavery, and the south was fighting for it’s right to secede, and to keep itself from getting screwed by the north.
Of course I still have plenty to learn. I’ll learn about this war yet by God. Help would be (and has been) appreciated 
.
Well, JoeSki, you sound smart enough to me, at least!
The thing with slavery…why did it seem so normal back then, and so repulsive, now? I have a pet theory (totally unsubstanciated by any facts whatsoever). I figure that it’s all in what we call it. Historically, every society has had unskilled maintenence labor (harvesting sugar, for instance) that nobody who can get out of it will do. In the old days, they used slaves. But the slaves were fed and kept warm, right? No sense damaging your valuable property!
These days, we call it “minimum wage occupation”, where, instead of providing adequately for their needs, we pay them a tiny amount of cash and expect them to meet the basic necessities of life from that. Many of them don’t. Of course, unlike true slaves, they’re free to leave. Sure! They can quit the 7-11 and become…welfare recipients…or employees at…another minimum wage occupation.
Wonder if we’ll se a civil war to free the sweat shop laborers, someday? And who’ll make the shoes after the revolution, then?
Allrighty, let’s see how this works out. This thread made me laugh so hard that I was compelled to sign up and add in my two kopeks.
I’ll start with a short tale of my own momentary brain-lapse :
While diagnosing a particularly strange computer problem, (the computer would spontaneously turn itself on, and had frequent lock-ups) I got on the phone with a tech support sort. Now, I’m a pretty computer-savvy guy, being a programmer and all, but it worked against me here.
Tech : “Is the computer hooked up to a network?”
Me : (Thinking of the LAN at work, and some of the router-based home networks my friends have) “No, no network.”
Tech : “How do you connect to the Internet?”
Me : “Cable Modem.” Okay, about right here’s when my brain turns back on. (D’oh!, was its only eloquent rebuttal.)
Tech : “Then you’re on a network.”
Me : “Yeah, okay… I didn’t think about that being a network. Sorry.”
Yes, technical folk can have those lapses too. But enough of my own humiliation, on to others I’ve heard or heard of:
In a High School history class, once upon a time, a rather smart girl who was in all the same Honors type classes as myself answered the teacher’s query about ‘an early twentieth-century war’ with ‘The Revolutionary War?’ And she was so eager about it, too…
A former roommate of mine once told me about a librarian from his hometown who insisted that Monty Python was a person… that, in fact, he was the one who played Brian in Life of Brian.
On a family vacation to the Lancaster, Pennsylvania region, my father informed me, my mother, and my grandmother, that the Amish folk were required to paint large letter-A’s on their barns, so that tax-assessors flying overhead in helicopters would know which farms were Amish. It was amusing to watch Mom and Grandma looking around for these mythical A’s, but it was still a bit mean of Dad.
Many of those slaves died in overcrowded disease ridden ships being shipped from their country to the owner’s country. They were often brutally beaten, for instance it was not unheard of for a foot to be chopped of if the slave kept running away. IF the owner was an intelligent person, they kept their slaves well fed, and warm. Many slave owners just provided a bare minimum of poor quality food to their slaves, and hovels for shelter, some were worse than that.
Very few slaves were allowed to learn how to read or write. They certainly could not count on the idea that they’d be able to stay in the same household as their loved ones, families were broken apart with no regard to the people involved. This isn’t even touching on the idea that if you were a beautiful female slave, than you’d have to “submit” to your “betters” attentions if you knew how to survive.
This in no way compares to “minimum wage workers” today. At least most of them DO have a chance to attempt to better themselves, and they certainly don’t face getting beaten severely, and risk losing a limb, if they decide to quit their job. It is a very hard thing, to be part of the “working poor” class, but at least the working poor have some basic human rights, and liberties. At least they have legal recourses if they are wronged, and a hope that legal aid will help them.
When I went to see “The Madness of King George,” I found myself in a theater with six other patrons, four of whom were High School students, under the impression that they were seeing Shakespeare.
When we went to see “Mighty Wind,” we were seated next to some guy who couldn’t shut up about the fact that he thought he would actually be seeing a live music show. In a movie theatre.
I had a sorority sister in college who grew up in the same state I did, and still could somehow never grasp the fact that those “big, yucky fields of yellow grass” were in fact wheat.
Hosiah, I think you need to rethink some of the things you believe.
I’m with you on the fellatio thing. I’d have thought most people knew what it meant. And you’re right about the credit card debt.
I personally agree with you on the soul issue. But as a religious issue, there’s no objective answer. For all we know, clones don’t have souls. How can you prove it either way?
On the banning books issue, I’d have to know what you’re talking about. Can you give an example of a book that’s currently banned by the government? The site you linked to doesn’t mention any book that was banned in the US more recently than 1966.
On Iraq, you’re 3-2-1. You’re right on (a), (b), and (e); © and (d) are matters of opinion; and wrong on (f). Bin Laden and Saddam both were already in power when the United States began supporting them.
On movie trivia, I don’t see why knowing trivia about a movie made in fifty years ago is superior to knowing trivia about a movie made five years ago. The Treasure of Sierra Madre was a great movie; but American Pie and Ice Age were also great movies and will undoubtedly be playing in college repetory theatres in fifty years and having students in that year complaining about how they don’t make great movies like that nowadays.
On casinos, what you wrote is wrong. I say this becuase I think you do know the facts but just didn’t express it right. Casinos obviously do not make a profit when customers win; they make their profit by minimizing their losses when customers win and maximizing their profit when they lose.
At least on the subject of slavery, you admit to not knowing the facts. So let me inform you that minumum wage workers are generally not required to submit to their employers’ sexual demands, cannot be subject to beatings for insubordination, or have to turn their children over to their employer. Just three of the ways minimum wage employment is better than slavery.
As for sports, it’s a popular subject. Not knowing it isn’t a crime or sin, but I can’t think of any subject that ignorance of is a matter for pride.
Okay, color me surprised here. At least I knew that John Adams and John Quincy Adams were the same family, but somehow I’d always thought of JQA as being John Adams’ son. Oops.
Um, actually, casinos do not make any profit when the customers lose. The money lost by the players by and large ends up paying players who win The odds of the house vs. the players winning over the long haul are even. If a casino wanted to make its money by winning bets placed by the players, it would have to fix the games, or else it would go broke really fast, because of having to pay the dealers, boxmen, floormen, cocktail waitresses, etc. The casino makes its money strictly by shorting winning players.
I dealt craps for five years, so I’ve seen this in action. Every period of time when the dice are “cold” is balanced by a “hot” roll at some point. When the dice are “choppy”, and the number of bets won over the space of a half hour or so are equal to the number of bets lost, the customers will gradually lose money because the house collects losing bets at true odds, but pays winning bets at less than true odds.
Thank you, Lea. (-:
Do you folks believe me after a casino employee verifies what I said? I can back this up some more…I believe the name is Darwin Ortiz, wrote a book that explains it very well. I also think “Scarne on Dice” covered some of the same territory. There’s also “200% of Nothing” a book on innumeracy. Forgive me folks, the author names and or titles elude my unreliable memory at this moment, and it’s time to go punch that clock again. I’ll have to unearth the books from the rubble and provide more detail…it’s been ten years since I was hot on probability math.
Incidentally, one of the best ways to figure out every casino game is to learn a programming language. Then write programs simulating the casino game you want to test. You know, have the computer simulate 10000 Keno games, then print stats on how many games hit one number, two numbers, etc. You’ll figure out why those “hit seven out of seven” payouts are so high, for such a cheap bet.
I wouldn’t argue so long and hard on this topic, if I didn’t see homeless, broke people wandering the streets every day, each of whom thought they had a sure-fire method to beat the casino.
Hey, don’t stop, now! I bet The Master Cecil himself could set you straighter than I could on probability…
What really bothers me, is that a person who would call “American Pie” a great movie in the same paragraph with “The Treasure of Sierra Madre” agrees with me on anything at all. I hate that! But you can’t win 'em all. Of course, I must be a crusty, senile old fart who rants against anything that is younger than me. This will be alleviated not a whit by my saying that I considered “Minority Report” to be a fantastic flick, and that I went to see all three “Lord of the Rings” movies on their opening night, and found them excellent examples of cinematic art. And that I think “Bowling for Columbine” should be mandatory viewing in high school.
But we’re getting into taste and personal preference, here, aren’t we? This thread should be about facts and those known and unknown, not taste. That’s a cafe thread…
Hosiah the Hoser
In my opinion, a classic film is just a popular movie with twenty years added to it. Film scholars now call Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton comedic geniuses, but back when their movies came out they were just a couple of guys that made people laugh - the equivalent of Jim Carey.
Anyway, on the casino issue, consider this: if casinos only make money when their customers win, why don’t they set up the games so the customer wins every time? Let’s imagine the play at the Casino Hosiah. They’re playing the dice game described above where the customer gets four dollars if he picks the winning number. But in the Casino Hosiah, the customer gets to pick his number after the die is rolled, so he can pick the winning number every time. The customer is happy because he collects four dollars off a dollar bet every roll. But the Casino is chuckling knowingly over the customer’s naivete; they know the real odds were 6-1 so they should be paying the customer six dollars on every roll not four. Boy is that sucker getting ripped off. Just look at how he keeps coming back for roll after roll, thinking he’s winning every time. The Casino can’t wait to see how much money they’ll have made when they add it up at the end of the week.
This “frequently asked question” has been up on the Washington State Ferries website for some time. I just can’t imagine it poses a big enough problem to require a website advisory.
Your logic is flawed. It isn’t that the casinos “make money when the players win”. The casino makes money when the players and the casino win at the same rate, but the casino collects the money the players lose at true odds, but pays less than true odds when the players win. It’s called the house percentage.
OK, let’s try an easy exercise. I can’t remember the house PC on all the bets, so let’s take one-roll bet like Aces. True odds on the bet are 35 to 1, (or 36 for one, if you take your bet down after it hits) but most casinos pay it at 30 to 1 (or 31 for 1 if you take the bet down). Let’s imagine the improbable happens and Aces hits exactly once every thirty-six rolls.(In the real world, it would average out to 1 out of thirty-six rolls over thousands of rolls- might hit four consecutive times, then not be seen again for a hundred or so rolls…) You bet a dollar on Aces every roll. Thirty-five rolls happen, and each time, you lose your dollar. The thirty-sixth roll, you win, and decide to take your bet down. You have just won thirty dollars. You bet thirty six dollars to win it. So, by your winning that one bet out of thirty-six, the house has made five dollars from you, because it didn’t pay you at true odds.
See how that works?
Thea, I understand how house odds work. I’m sure that you and Hosiah do as well. But when Hosiah writes “By the way, casinos do not make money when you lose at their game. They make their profit when you win.” a casual reader would easily misconstrue his intent.