tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5751271189667675662.post6603218592360256446..comments2024-03-28T09:19:51.567-04:00Comments on Look Me In The Eye: A walk through the casinoJohn Robisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07407165016025447113noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5751271189667675662.post-86791789398902118022011-10-02T17:10:36.957-04:002011-10-02T17:10:36.957-04:00There are unsmiling faces and bright plastic chain...There are unsmiling faces and bright plastic chains, and a wheel in perpetual motion. And they follow the races and pay out the gains with no show of an outward emotion.... "The Turn of a Friendly Card" Alan Parsons Projectpolyrhythmiahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01840893621720154664noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5751271189667675662.post-45083008954501521872011-09-30T19:32:08.648-04:002011-09-30T19:32:08.648-04:00John,
I saw you on ABC TV Big Ideas. Good perform...John, <br />I saw you on ABC TV Big Ideas. Good performance ! Spell-binding.<br /><br />The gambling industry is a big political issue in Australia right now, mostly due to Andrew Wilkie's stand to enforce limits. I am a fence sitter on this issue.<br /><br />I see the personal tragedy, but believe that the best thing to tax is sin, and that private institutions such as those funded by gambling are at least as good and important as governmental ones.<br /><br />Apart from that, I believe in the US, mostly because of how US Americans have such great business sense. Great for getting out of trouble. Like now . . . I believe in Australia for the same and other reasons.<br /><br />Oh, our biggest problem right now is post-modernism and its problem child Environmentalism, now gone mad. Climate Change is almost entirely natural, not man made, as explained at www.scienceheresy.com <br /><br />I know Andrew quite well. I had two long chats with him in his carpet shop about my inventions at www.ecofluidics.com . Gave him plums from our plum tree both times. <br /><br />Andrew is our local senator here in Tasmania, the most politically over-represented State in the whole world. We are only half a million (40% of whom are public servants), but our senators often hold the balance of power in the national Senate, as Andrew does at present.<br /><br />It is also easy to chat to senators and other pollies here in Hobart, the state capital. "The mainland" paid a high price to get Tasmania into the Australian federation ~1900. Tasmania is strategically important, like Cuba. Hence its being the 2nd colony, after New South Wales. Van Dieman's Land.<br /><br />Tasmania is very old-worldish. And beautiful. Has about 100 mountain peaks above 1,000 metres high. The rugged Western half of the island is nearly all wilderness. THE most feared penal settlement in the empire was here at Sarah Island. I have a strong family connection to this region where they got Huon Pine.<br /><br />Tasmania has been the preferred place of exile for Northern Europeans for ~150 years. Mostly from Britain, but from other places also, like Schleswig-Holstein, where one of my great grandfathers came from, via Queensland.<br /><br />Hobart's first business, after convictism, was whaling. A potent combination: ex-convicts and mostly US whalers. It produced an extremely high density of hotels with public bars.<br /><br />Oh, I have seen the world also. I am probably the first Tasmanian to have worked in Silicon Valley, was there 1969-70. I was in Stockholm, Sweden from 1966-71, and places between Finland and California.<br /><br />All of which used to be so beautiful. Before so many cars as now.<br /><br />Bye for now.me1+https://www.blogger.com/profile/17586224197509757435noreply@blogger.com