Simplified, the first two laws of
thermodynamics are 1) you can’t win and 2) you can’t break even. Said Stephen
Hawking in A Brief History of Time, “The
increase of disorder or entropy is what distinguishes the past from the future,
giving a direction to time.” Though he was not the first to notice the effect, Rudolf
Clausius (1822–1888) is credited with formalizing the concept of entropy (ΔS=∫[dq/T]) in the 1850s. In a closed system spontaneous change is always in the direction of a reduction of energy availablefor useful work. This is another way of saying net disorder always increases overall; an increase of order in some corner of the
system is always bought with a greater decrease in the system as a whole. Things
decay. We decay. We can fight decay selectively, but we use up limited
resources in the process. Our ability to combat decay decays. Entropy wins in
the end.
This doesn’t happen right away. We have
our glory days when we exploit our surroundings effectively to make our
particular corner of the system splendid and strong. As Roderick Usher sings in
allusion to his family home in Poe’s story, “Banners yellow, glorious, golden, On its roof did float and flow (This—all this—was in the olden Time long ago)...” But of course the good times don’t last
forever for either his estate or his family. (He and his twin sister Madeline are
the last of the family lineage.) So, “And round about his home the glory That blushed and bloomed Is but a dim-remembered story Of the old time entombed...” Like Roderick, I (also the last of a
lineage) feel somehow connected almost physically to my home (built decades ago
by my dad in sunnier times), and both of us are falling apart. The roof leaks,
my teeth rot. The plumbing has problems, so does mine. The house visibly ages,
so do I. Its furnaces cough, so do my lungs. Its minor systems (e.g. garage
door openers) wear out, my physical abilities wane. Carpets fray, hair thins. The
house more easily suffers damage from use, my stamina is much diminished. Both
of us have become very expensive to maintain even in far less than ideal
condition.
Back when order was still increasing on what is now my plot of land. The house was not yet built, I had a Donny Osmund haircut, and area codes were unnecessary on local calls.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not giving up on
either of us quite yet. I’ll continue to invest time, energy, and money to keep
us both functional, but in both our cases some realism is in order about what
effects of entropy are reversible and what are not. Unlike a human being, a
house in principle can be rebuilt totally of course, but that usually is not a
pragmatic course of action for owners with limited funds – it is not a
pragmatic course of action for me. Still, I’ll not yet let either the house or
me just split in two and sink into the tarn. Nonetheless, I’m acutely aware that
neither of my parents lived past 74. Entropy caught up with them. My intention
is to exceed that benchmark (not a very high bar nowadays), but entropy might
play the prankster with me by then, too. One never knows. I don’t hold a grudge, though of course
I miss being 18, at least in terms of youthful vigor. (It and youthful
foolishness were a package deal.) Entropy is a condition of existence. Without
it there could be no life at all. Better some than none. So on balance I’d call
it a positive. Meanwhile, there even may remain time to float yet another yellow,
glorious, golden banner or two on the roof. I’ll get on that.
This being the first week of 2024, some
readers might have had some experience with alcohol sometime in the past seven
days. Some may regret it. Others not. Some might even be participating in Dry
January, though I suspect most of those doing so are non-drinkers anyway. We
all know the health risks of alcohol overindulgence. I blogged on this not long
ago: The Booze Bin. Those affected directly
and indirectly by alcohol abuse are not few. As many as 1 in 8 drinkers may
qualify as alcoholics and (according to the CDC) as many as 1 in 3 (while not necessarily
meeting criteria for alcoholism) drink excessively. Nonetheless, these are
still minorities – sizable ones, but minorities. For the moderate majority of
drinkers are there benefits besides (possibly dubious) health ones? They
obviously think so or they wouldn’t do it. First let’s first dabble in statistics,
some of which are counterintuitive.
Per capita consumption of alcohol in the
U.S. (counting only alcohol content itself, whether in beer, wine, cider, or
spirits) peaked in the 1970s, which is pretty much as I remember the decade. It
declined through the 1980s and 1990s and then started to rise again after 2000.
It spiked in 2020. Though it fell back a little in 2021, it remained higher
than pre-pandemic levels. In 2022-23 it again trended slowly upward. 62% of
adults (over 18) say they drink at least sometimes; the number is 65% of those
over 21, the legal age in the U.S. This compares to 71% back in the 1970s. The average
annual per capita consumption for Americans over 21 (abstainers included in the
total) currently is 2.83 gallons [10.71 liters] of pure alcohol or 603 standard
drinks. Oddly, alcohol consumption is positively correlated with income: 79% of
those with incomes over $100,000 are regular drinkers, 58% of those earning
over $40,000 but less than $100,000 are drinkers, and 53% of those earning
under $40,000 are drinkers. College graduates are more likely to drink (74%)
than non-grads (56%). Unsurprisingly, weekly attendees of religious services
are less likely to drink (48%) than non-attendees (67%). Non-Hispanic whites
are more likely to drink (68%) than either Hispanics (59%) or non-Hispanic
blacks (50%) according to the Pew Research Center. The differences among adult
age groups are significant but not massive, though there is considerable variance by
age of beverage choices, with older Americans preferring more traditional
spirits, beers, and wines; the percentage of drinkers 18-34 is 58%, 35-54 is
66%, and over 55 is 61%. Among older Americans, health issues might affect the
percentages. Getting back to the matter of non-health
benefits, are there any? For moderate – and only
for moderate – consumers of alcohol the answer is a qualified yes. (“Moderate”
according to the CDC is no more than 2 drinks per day for a man, 1, for a
woman, and no more than 14 in any one week; “binge drinking” is more than 4 in
a day. I haven’t had 14 in any one week in at least a decade… maybe 2 decades…
maybe 3.) An article on the Harvard T.H.
Chan School of Public Health site states, “The social and psychological
benefits of alcohol can’t be ignored. A drink before a meal can improve
digestion or offer a soothing respite at the end of a stressful day; the
occasional drink with friends can be a social tonic. These physical and social
effects may also contribute to health and well-being.” Professor Robin Dunbar
of the University of Oxford’s Experimental Psychology department agrees. He
says, “Our social networks provide us with the single most important buffer
against mental and physical illness. While pubs traditionally have a role as a
place for community socialising, alcohol’s role appears to be in triggering the
endorphin system, which promotes social bonding.” A more detailed analysis can
be found in the study Functional Benefits of (Modest) Alcohol Consumption, which states in the Abstract, “We combine
data from a national survey with data from more detailed behavioural and
observational studies to show that social drinkers have more friends on whom
they can depend for emotional and other support, and feel more engaged with,
and trusting of, their local community."
It turns out that even just bending the
long-suffering bartender's ear can be as therapeutic as cliché would have it. Note, however, the social aspect of the
tippling mentioned above. Drinking alone, with all due respect to GeorgeThorogood, misses much of the
point. Maybe one to unwind upon arriving home alone is OK, but think twice
before pouring a second. Skip the third, and maybe join the sober minority if
you find that hard to do. They have a point to make, too.
Ida
Lupino - One for My Baby (and One More
for the Road)
[One trusts that it’s the metaphorical
road back to happiness]
Auld Lang
Syne will fill the airwaves in a couple days. The song itself is
part of the nostalgia it is intended to evoke. We resist updating the
old-fashioned Scots lyrics because that is not the way we heard it in our
youths. Besides, we get the gist of it as is. We all know how a song can stimulate the memory
of a special place, person or event. Most of us can experience that not just
from a few but from hundreds of songs. There are several though (besides the
Robert Burns ditty) that might come to my mind on New Year’s Eve but seldom
anytime else. Oddly, most of the ones of that sort on my list I don’t even like very much, if at all. But
they pop into my head as the clock runs out in the current year. A
non-exhaustive sample: In the Mood performed by the Glenn Miller Orchestra. My mom loved to dance (especially
after a scotch and soda, but without one as well) and my dad wasn’t bad at it. (I
did not inherit this trait: I dance like a wounded buffalo.) She had little
trouble talking him into it, commonly in the living room in the presence of
company. They had dated during WW2, so my mom’s most frequently (but
non-exclusively) preferred dance was the jitterbug. Her record of choice was
typically a Glenn Miller album, and In
the Mood was the first track. She never skipped it. It is actually a pretty
good number, but I heard it so many times growing up that I was sick of it as an adult – until recent years and only on New Year’s Eve. It transports me
back to when my parents were half my current age and dancing in our living
room. In October 1957 the Soviets launched Sputnik, the
first artificial satellite. On a clear night it was visible from the ground. My
dad thought this was the start of something important so he made a point of
taking my sister, my mom, and I (and the dog for some reason) out to the
driveway on a very clear night. I’m guessing a local radio station must have
mentioned what time the satellite would pass overhead. It came and went on
schedule. Just to impress upon us further the memory of this (I was not yet 5)
my dad announced firmly, “OK, we’ve seen Sputnik.” In 1958 the novelty song The Purple People Eater about a space alien playing rock’n’roll became a hit; at age 5 I loved it and
played a 45 of it repeatedly. Even though this was months after the driveway viewing, the song and that event are tangled in
my head somehow; I cannot think of one without the other. The song is silly and
I seldom think of it except at the very end of a year. Having a sister two years older was a huge
advantage in matters of pop culture right up through high school. This was
especially so because Sharon was pretty hip for her entire life. She was always
in step with the times, which I by nature was not. Because of her, I
nonetheless was introduced to social trends and artists (Bob Dylan, for
instance) when they were still cutting edge. Left to myself I would have missed
them until they were passé. This started early. Sharon (b. 1950) loved the
Everly Brothers for a few years straddling 1960. I would play her 45s of them,
and particularly liked the 1962 Crying in the Rain. Once again, it
is not a song I play as an adult at any other time, but I might just do so on
the 31st. It reminds me of my sister. Hi Sharon. Janis Joplin’s I Need a Man to Love is
the second track on the Cheap Thrills
album, which came out in 1968. I liked Janis from the get-go, and still do, but
she grew on me more and more between 1968 and 1970. (Our psyches and tastes
often evolve a lot between age 15 and 18 – mine did.) Initially, I Need a Man to Love was not one of my
favorite tracks on the album. A prep school buddy named George (a troubled
young man, but surprisingly insightful at times) told me to give it a deeper
listen. He said it was undefensively soulful. I did. He was right. All of Janis
evokes an extended era in my mind, but of course that track also reminds me of
George. He died of HIV related illnesses two decades ago. The Commodores – Easy. This is a song about which I had and
have no strong feelings as a song. I neither like it nor dislike it. In the 70s
I never played it on purpose but didn’t change the station if it came on the
car radio either. I would react the same today, though one seldom hears this
number anymore even on an oldies station. The reason it is memorable for me is
that my 70s girlfriend Angela once sang it (with radio accompaniment) in the
passenger seat of my car as we drove to NYC. I don’t know why. I didn’t
interrupt or ask afterward. We all sometimes do things that are hard to
explain. That memory sticks with me and makes the tune a possible New Year’s
Eve play. Time after Time by Cyndi Lauper.
In 1984 I owned a property on Schoolhouse Lane with two small houses on
it. I moved into the smaller cottage and rented out the other. It was the first
real estate actually in my own name. The first home that is really yours tends
to be special in a way that later ones are not, and I accordingly put a lot of
work into it – not all at once but steadily. The grounds in particular got
attention: I installed decorative 2-rail fencing, reworked the driveway, and planted
blue spruce to delineate the northern boundary line. On the cottage itself I replaced
exterior trim and repaired the back deck, which had seriously dry rotted in
places. I recall Cyndi Lauper’s song playing on the radio while I worked on the
deck; I cannot hear the song without remembering feeling at home in that home.
Incidentally, the official video of that song was filmed nearby; the train
station scene is in the NJ Transit train station in Morristown. Am I a Lauper
fan? No, not really though I don’t dislike her either.
My old Schoolhouse Lane cottage
Frank Sinatra Fly Me to the Moon. A night club in the 1990s, where
someone important to my life worked, closed every night playing this number on
the sound system. The relationship that this song evokes would require a book rather than a
paragraph to begin to describe. So let’s just call it intense rather than characterize
it any other way here. That’s one per decade (OK, two in the 1960s -- three counting when I most commonly heard In the Mood) up
to the 21st century. I’ll leave the next three for another blog
someday – maybe. Once again, not one of these is a favorite song on its own terms (though I do like the Joplin number). My general taste tends more to
bluesier and/or harder rock. But that is not the point, is it? The point is a memory –
maybe a good one, maybe a bad one, but a poignant one either way. There are also entire genres of music with a
nostalgia factor. I’ve grown to like much 1940s fare far more than I did when
my parents played it on the stereo for instance. I see I’m not alone in that with groups
such as the Postmodern Jukebox covering songs such as What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve, charted by Kay Kyser in 1947. In
the case of people as young as that, they are nostalgic for an era they never
experienced. True, I wasn’t around in the 40s either, but the music definitely
was in the house when I grew up. So, December 31 – on which I plan a quiet evening
– I may not only hear Auld Lang Syne
but some unfavorite yet special tunes from my youth. Perhaps also, some Kitty
Kallen and Harry James. Then on January 1 to welcome the new year I’ll try
something new.
Postmodern
Jukebox – What Are You Doing New Year's
Eve?
Some days I feel my age and others not. If there
is a reason for the day to day differences (sleep length, diet, exercise, or
whatever) I haven’t been able to discern it. The creaky days occur more
frequently with each passing year, but the first hints of them appeared
surprisingly early: soon after 30. That is a time of life when the innate sense
of invulnerability of the 18-y.o. fades and mortality starts feeling real. This
is evident in much of the pop culture content aimed at thirtysomethings. It
accounts, for example, for the success of the movie The Big Chill among my fellow Boomers in 1983. Strangely enough, Barbie, directed and co-written by 40-y.o.
Millennial mom Greta Gerwig, likewise speaks to the sense of aging among
today’s Millennials (e.g. the bus stop bench scene). Thirtysomething (sometimes
fortysomething) is an age when many folks adopt exercise regimens and start
taking megavitamins to try to slow the hands of the clock. It’s when
entrepreneurs with the wherewithal start businesses that take on the Grim Reaper
himself. One such company is Altos Labs, formed by Jeff
Bezos and Yuri Milner, which seeks to extend life through a variety of methods,
but in particular through cellular reprogramming. The credentials of its
researchers are impressive. Calico Life Sciences, a subsidiary of Alphabet
(Google), is similarly dedicated to combat aging. The company’s home page is
worth a look. BioSplice Therapeutics reveals its approach in its name. Juvenescence reveals its goal in its name. If none of these
or competing labs produce sufficient results in time for you to dodge the
scythe, there is always Alcor. The notion of suspended animation has been around
in science fiction for more than a century. So, too, the similar notion of
deliberately freezing a body in hopes it can be thawed out and reanimated at
some future date when medical science has advanced to the point to make that
possible. Alcor, located in very unchilly Scottsdale Arizona, was founded in 1972
in order to do just that. When a “patient” (who, of course, must be legally
dead) arrives at the facility, s/he is injected with chemicals to prevent the
formation of damaging ice crystals. The body is lowered to a temperature of
-196 Celsius and then deposited in a tank of liquid nitrogen. There are
presently 224 patients plus about 100 pets. Among the patients are baseball
great Ted Williams and Bitcoin entrepreneur Hal Finney. You can reserve a spot
for yourself at a cost of over $200,000, though you can save some money if you
just preserve the head.
It would be tempting to prank someone with an
Alcor reservation who awakes after some minor surgery: say the operation didn’t
go well, but not to worry because you’ve been thawed out, cured, and it is now
the year 2324. You can pay the bill at the desk. The temptation probably should
be suppressed. Meantime, I’ll just deal with my creaks and aches
as best I can and hope that tomorrow is one of those days with a more youthful
spring in my step.
When I read 1984
(1949) by George Orwell as a school assignment back in the 1960s, the novel’s
timeline already had been overtaken by real historical events. That didn’t
matter. Alternate realities and parallel worlds long had existed in science
fiction by then, predating by decades the quite serious hypothesis by physicist
Hugh Everett in 1950s that they actually might exist. H.G. Wells has characters
drive through a portal into one in Men
Like Gods (1923), and it wasn’t his first exploration of the idea. Robert
Heinlein famously rescued his early fiction (see The Past through Tomorrow) by the tactic. 1984 is a book of ideas. What mattered was that those ideas
remained plausible and scary in the 1960s – as they still do in the 2020s. In 1984,
Winston Smith’s love interest Julia is a curious character. It is hard to see
exactly what she sees in the middle-aged Winston, but she sees something.
Winston himself seems surprised by her persistent affection. Julia gets her own
story in Julia by Sandra Newman, a novel
authorized by the Orwell estate. Nothing in Julia
contradicts 1984, but the character
is not as shallow and emotion-driven as she sometimes seems in Orwell’s novel.
SPOILER ALERT: it is impossible to discuss what is special about this version
of Julia without SPOILERS, so, if you wish to be surprised, stop reading this
blog post now, read Newman’s book, and then return to this blog afterward.
Both Winston and Julia work at Oceania’s Ministry
of Truth in London on Airstrip One, formerly known as Britain. (BTW, Oceania’s
flag is described in passing as stars and stripes.) Winston destroys objects
and old news articles that contradict current propaganda (e.g. previously
projected production targets that were missed) while Julia works in Fiction
where old literature is rewritten (and new literature created) in Newspeak to
be compatible with the ideology of Ingsoc. The corruption of language that is
Newspeak, which redefines old words and creates new ones (while always
shrinking the total number in the dictionary), is a particularly insidious form
of persuasion. It is difficult or impossible in Newspeak to say anything
contrary to the Party without calling oneself a criminal while doing it. The
words just don’t exist. We learn that Julia’s parents before the
Revolution had been dangerously bourgeois, which would have tainted her too,
but when still a teen she informed on her mother, which won her a pass into the
Outer Party. Julia wears the sash of the Anti-Sex League, though she indulges
in clandestine affairs. As Winston grows increasingly troubled by the notion of
truth, which it is his job to destroy, Julia notices him and is genuinely
attracted to him as a bad boy. She picks up on his resistance to the Party
line, especially after spotting him leaving Charrington’s shop in the prole
district. Inner Party honcho and torturer O’Brien picks up on both of them. He
tempts Winston ideologically by pretending to be a link to the Resistance known
as the Brotherhood. He tempts Julia (who is more interested in her own personal
freedom than philosophy) by dangling in front of her the prospect of being
elevated to the Inner Party if she works for the thought police. She knows full
well that the room above Charrington’s shop where she meets Winston for trysts
is bugged. Nor is Winston (unknown to him) the only man she meets there and prompts
to incriminate himself while there. So, while she actually likes Winston
(unlike some of the other men), her professions of love are calculated. Given
the choices she has, however, it is hard to judge her as evil – just as
desperate to save herself. What do the perpetrators of this system gain from
it? They have the joy of the raw exercise of power. This is especially true of
the Inner Party members, of course, but also applies to lower links in the
chain. As O’Brien explains, "If you want a picture of the future, imagine
a boot stamping on a human face – for ever." The fellow wearing the boot,
at least in that moment, is having fun. The timeline of Julia extends beyond that of 1984, which ends with Winston’s
conversion and execution. We learn there really is a Resistance on Airstrip
One. This seems improbable given the stability achieved by the thoroughness of
Oceania’s repression, but aid to the rebels from Eurasia (one of the three
superstates, the other being Eastasia, perpetually at war with each other in
different combinations) has upset the status quo. There is more than a little
hint, however, that even were they to succeed, it would be a false rescue: a
matter of “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” 1984 at its
core is a dark vision of humanity – and one that is all too credible. Julia makes the title character’s
behavior in 1984 far more explicable
– again, all too credibly. We are easily tempted to ruthlessness and disregard
for truth in pursuit of lofty goals and also purely selfish ones. The two books
are complementary and are welcome warnings about where those temptations can
lead. Highly recommended.
The information center on my
Chevy has a lot to say to me about everything from tire pressure to remaining
oil life. Yesterday as the temperature dropped toward freezing, it warned me
that icy roads are possible and nagged me to drive carefully. That’s OK. It is
one reason I bought the car – not for the information center but for being a
better winter vehicle. Until a couple years ago I drove a 1998 4WD GMC 2500 Sierra
(previously my dad’s) and a 2014 Cruze. The ’98 was a great winter vehicle but
by 2020 it finally had grown too tired to keep on the road and had to be
replaced. New 4WD pickups have prices that are simply ridiculous, so I opted to
replace it with a basic 2WD Colorado
priced in the mid-20s, which to me seemed quite high enough. It served (and
serves) the workaday purposes for which I needed a pickup. The problem was that
both my vehicles were then 2WD, and the winter of 20/21 proved this to be a bad
idea. The Cruze was a small sedan runabout that was reliable enough on a dry
road, but all but useless in snow and ice. The Colorado was only marginally
better. There were days when neither of my vehicles could make it up my
driveway, which definitely has an incline but is hardly a cliff. So, in the
summer of 2021 I traded the Cruze for a Chevy Trailblazer with All Wheel Drive.
(AWD is distinguished from 4WD by a differential between the front and rear
axles.) It handles well in snow and, importantly, makes it up my driveway.
My driveway a few winters ago
4WD and AWD are well and good
for extra traction driving forward, but of course they are no help at all when
trying to stop. The Trailblazer’s information center is not wrong to warn about
ice. I’ve been lucky with cars and ice, but I’ve had close calls. As a
pedestrian I avoided getting struck by a car that lost control on black ice
only by leaping over a fence. In a Jeep (in 4WD) on an icy road I once managed
to maneuver around a pointlessly stopped vehicle when it was clear my brakes
weren’t going to do the job. My Cruze once slid over a small backroad bridge
sideways without incident. In the two latter cases it helped that I was driving
slowly and didn’t lock my brakes. On dry pavement AAA recommends at least 3 to
4 seconds braking time (adjust speed and distance accordingly) between you and
the car in front. Increase this to 8 to 10 seconds on icy roads. Even this
might not be enough. Over 150,000 auto accidents occur every year in the US due
to icy roads. There are over 1800 fatalities in those crashes. In the Northeast
only 11.4% of surveyed drivers say they haven’t driven on black ice. I think
those 11.4% are mistaken. I think they have but aren’t aware of it – that they
simply didn’t happen to step on the brakes while on top of it. The danger doesn’t stop when
you park and exit your vehicle. The CDC reports that 1 million people in the US
are injured each year by slips and falls on ice and snow. More than 17,000 of
those falls are fatal. For those 65 and older, falls are the leading cause of
accidental injury and death. Once again, I’ve been lucky so far. Every year I
slip and fall on ice at some point, but, other than the occasional sore butt,
as yet I have injured only my pride. Nonetheless, I’ve stocked up on salt and
sand for my sidewalks and driveway. NJ winters are unpredictable: some are
fierce with repeated blizzards while others are almost balmy. I hope for the
latter but am preparing for the former.
My choice for a movie last night was a
re-watch of the neo-noir The Big Town
starring Matt Dillon and Diane Lane at her most stunning. I recommend it. The
film was made in 1987 but is set in the mid-1950s. Matt plays a young
professional craps shooter in Chicago. The
Big Town can be enjoyed without expertise in the game which is fortunate
because I understand the rules of craps only in the broadest outline. In its
casino form the betting in craps is quite complicated. Street craps is usually
considerably simplified, but the fast pace still can make it hard to follow for
a newbie. For all that, it has a reputation as a workingman’s game, though at
the upper levels gamblers play for very large stakes. Craps was invented in New
Orleans in the early 19th century, apparently deriving from the
European dice game Hazard. It reached a peak in popularity in World War 2, but
still has plenty of aficionados today. It has never been my game, but as a kid
I generally liked board games with dice. They introduced a random element that
nonetheless was literally in one’s own hands, thereby mirroring life itself.
Dice are very old, and probably derive from
the casting of bones for divination: 6-sided knucklebones in particular, which
continued to be used into Classical times. Ancient cube dice were commonly made
from bone (or ivory), which gives this idea further credence. The pips (the
dots) allowed numerology to enhance the divinations. Once dice were invented,
of course, secular gambling with them was a natural. The oldest dice ever found
were excavated in southeast Iran and date to at least 2500 BCE – perhaps
centuries older. Not far behind are bone dice found at Skara Brae in Scotland,
which date to at least 2400 BCE. They turn up in Egyptian tombs from 2000 BCE
and also are found both in ancient China and India. Given the geographic spread
of these finds, I think we can surmise that the actual origins long predate any
of them. Dice of alternate shapes (e.g. 4-sided pyramids and 20-sided
polyhedrons) also are ancient, but 6-sided cubes by far were, and are, the most
common. The arrangement of pips were largely catch-as-catch-can until Roman
times. The ancient Roman die was the same as a modern one, with opposite sides
adding up to 7. The Romans enjoyed dice enough to use them as metaphors for
taking a chance, just as we do today. Hence Caesar’s “Alea iacta est” (“the die
is cast”) when he crossed the Rubicon on January 10, 49 BCE for a do-or-die showdown
with the Senate. Dice didn’t disappear in the Middle Ages in Europe but became less
common and non-standard. They made a comeback in the Renaissance. The Roman pip
arrangement again became standard and has been with us ever since. Modern dice come in three
basic types: loaded, commercial, and casino. It is best to avoid loaded dice if
one values one’s own health and safety. Commercial dice are the ones found in
board games and toy stores. They are inexpensive and produce results that are
random enough for informal purposes, but they almost certainly have unintended
small biases in them. Casino dice are carefully crafted to be as perfectly
balanced as possible; even the pips are filled with a polymer of the same
density as the die itself so that they don’t introduce a bias. These, though
somewhat costlier than commercial dice, are not actually expensive, but casinos
change them every 8 throws or so, so they go through a lot of them. Can a skilled dice player
beat the odds – at least by a little? Maybe. Casinos try to get around this
possibility in craps by requiring that thrown dice bounce off the back wall.
This introduces enough unpredictability to make nonrandom outcomes very
unlikely. Even in a straight throw, minor variations in motor control,
geometry, and air resistance should be enough to ensure random results with
balanced dice. Yet, maybe. Casinos make a good deal of money, though, off
shooters who think they can do it. My bet is always on the House. Have I ever made money with dice? Not much, but
some. Back in college in a Business class we were told the dart theory of
investing. Beating the S&P with any one investment is just a matter of
luck, we were told, and picking stocks by throwing darts at the Wall Street Journal on average produces
returns no better or worse than picking them after assiduous research, which
necessarily is always incomplete. I believe this is still taught today. Some
years back, I figured dice should work as well as darts, so after jotting down
the names of a half dozen companies that I recognized, I rolled a die and
picked that number on the list. John Deere did all right. Too bad I didn’t buy
more.
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