Posted 9:26 PM by Robert Ronald Smith

This isn't gambling

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about miserable luck playing poker. It improved after I wrote that... not much, but enough so that I could stay in games and occasionally dominate them. The last 2 nights, however, have seen a return to completely hopeless cards. These cards are so bad that even with play money, I can't win a hand. Last night, I played carefully and conservatively for well over an hour before I won a hand. Oddly, I won the next one too, then never won again that night. Tonight, I never won a single hand, and the final hand was an example of how snake-bit I've been. I had a set of 3's with a King kicker. From the 5 cards on the board, no straights or flushes were possible. I lost to a set of 3's with an Ace kicker. My best hole cards tonight were a pair of Kings, with which I didn't come close to winning. Now THAT'S depressing.

Posted 11:02 AM by Robert Ronald Smith

bob smith usa

Several years ago, I created a web homage to some of the men who call themselves Bob Smith... not Robert, but Bob. As with me, their unassuming choice to be known by the simplest of their possible name choices (e.g. Robert Smith, Robert Ronald Smith, R.R. Smith, R. Ronald Smith, Rob Smith, Rob Ron Smith) seemed to me deserving of recognition. That web site, World of Bob Smiths, has 233 of us.

It seems that Filmaker Neil Abramson agrees with me, and has made a movie titled bob smith usa, highlighting 7 of the 81,000 (his number) Bob Smiths in the U.S. Most or all of those he chose to follow and film are also on my web site, and I've had contact with some of them.

There is a website for the documentary, which will be included in quite a few film festivals. Go to my World of Bob Smiths where a poster for the movie is linked to the movie site.

Maybe the next step is a Bob Smith festival?

Posted 10:46 AM by Robert Ronald Smith

Cars as a measure of our personality

As I do most every year, I just spent some time browsing current new auto models, and, as has been true for many years, I came away bored. As most any man over 50 would tell you, new model releases were once a major event, and showrooms were flooded with excitement.

I feel sorry for auto designers now. I know that they're as capable of creating exciting new designs as ever, but they're held in check by a variety of constraints. Naturally, government regulation is a biggie. Makers are locked into fuel efficiency standards and safety regs. There's nothing wrong with fuel efficiency or auto safety. In the 70's, I switched from being a true-blue American to buying German cars (Audi Fox and Porsche 914) that could get in the neighborhood of 34 MPG on trips. At the time, nothing similar was American-made. American manufacturers were convinced that we would all continue to buy gas-guzzlers if they didn't offer us a choice. As usual, people do FIND choices, turn their friends envious, and the market MUST change.

None of the cars I bought in the 60's and 70's were traditional front-engine, rear-drive. The first few were Corvairs (rear-engine, rear-drive) and, despite Ralph Nader's self-serving lies, they were considerably more stable and safe than the rest of the American auto stable. My '72 Porsche 914 was mid-engine, rear-drive and the most stable I've ever driven. My '74 Audi Fox was an early small front-engine, front-drive that ran rings around most Minnesota snow travelers.

Nope, nothing wrong with fuel economy or safety, but when it becomes government mandated, choice is limited. Regulations have surrounded vehicle design with constraints that drive designers into ever-more-limited innovation. The result is that cars all tend to look alike, act alike, and offer fewer real choices to buyers.

Although I no longer the kind of driving we usually do, namely trips or city driving, there is still a frustrated racer within me. For me (and I think, for most of us) all speed limits are too low. If I could afford the fines, I would ignore them and have some fun. In the past, I reached speeds over 100 on trips, and that was before freeways, and I wasn't being very reckless. There are still many roads that can easily accomodate such speeds.

Returning to new models: Every few years, I'm delighted that some maker will introduce a fun vehicle. Sometimes it has been Chrysler, and often Pontiac. There are a few available now... Ford's GT, a remake of their remarkable GT 40, Pontiac's revived GTO, and, my current favorite, the Pontiac Solstice, a damned cute little roadster that is priced starting at $20,000. That's cheap by today's standards. For someone who bought HOUSES for $14,000 and $25,000, today's "cheap" is still off-putting.

Anyway, thanks to Pontiac for the attempt. The market for 2-seaters is limited now. If you have even one kid, 2 seats is no longer enough for the family, even for short trips, since it has become illegal to carry a kid on your lap. If you have 2 or more, you have to buy enough seats for each carseat, filling the market with vans and SUV's.

As more women joined the workforce, and driving more, they began influencing vehicle choice toward comfortable, insulated cocoon-like vehicles. Taking a trip turned from a minor adventure into a comfy, cruise-control freeway jaunt that's about as interesting as watching television. I've come to hate freeways. They're designed to get us from A to B, ignoring everything in between, with brief stops in artificial environments designed to fuel and feed us. It's like slow airline travel... sit back, put on headphones, relax, and look straight ahead.

Yes, you can still travel non-freeway routes (and I do) but the vehicles we're stuck with just don't fit such routes. Once you're become part of the insulated freeway crowd, going back to TRAVELLING seems weird... too slow, too inconvenient. Once you've accomodated your thinking to about mile a minute, taking non-freeway routes becomes a whole different world.

For me, the worst aspect is that we're driving BY each other daily, and not even noticing. There IS life in-between starting-point and destination. I hope that we can remember that, and not just become a flurry of bugs darting about from place to place.

Posted 8:37 AM by Robert Ronald Smith

Art?

Since I'm now teaching a class (actually 2) in ART at a small charter high school, I've been reconsidering what art means to me... what it means personally, and what the WORD means. I have no great wisdom to shed on those questions, and have come back to the position I arrived at long ago and repeatedly: As a word, "art" has only the fuzziest of meanings. We have the art of persuasion, the art of war, and application of the word to almost any human endeavor. I suspect that some torturers believe they've raised their practices to an artistic level.

My "art" class will be quite traditional, not unlike what the "masters" inflicted on their pupils. Some 47 years ago, as a college art major, I came to the reluctant conclusion that there is an enormous amount of crap being accepted and even proclaimed as "art". I've watched as any graphic image that seems completely mysterious is likely to be praised as art... presumably because those who feel compelled to critique art cannot admit that there is nothing to be understood in a particular work... so they invent "meaning" for the work, embellnshing it with equally mysterious comments that cannot easily be criticized because they can't be understood. "If I say nothing in particular, who can argue?" That's the "politics" of art. I've read artistic commentary that concentrated on what the artist WASN'T doing, and what the piece DIDN'T represent. That should be a blatant clue that their was NO real content to discuss.

One of the results of this gibberish over time has been that artists seek, first of all, to produce work that is different from all other work. They don't want to be compared... they don't want to compete... they WANT to be mysterious. They hope to be respected simply because they've given you no reason to respect them.

I'm no art "snob". I can show you graffitti that demonstrates artistic talent, and simple art works that communicate a feeling so strongly that they deserve to be admired, respected, and called art. There are famous abstract paintings that I would hang on my wall, but with not much more enthusiasm than a nice wallpaper pattern. Stuff can be painted by an "artist", on canvas, and be pretty, and still not be art in any significant sense.

My "attitude" coalesced when my painting professor in college won a major prize with an all-black oil painting. That led me to drop out of college and reject the "modern art world" as far too filled with bullshit to deserve attention. Artistic creation, of any kind, is far too important to me to muddle it up with inventive crap.

So, I'll inflict that attitude on my students. We'll be in good company... those artists who have survived centuries with respect for their works.

Posted 4:19 PM by Robert Ronald Smith

Out of sync

I've never been a big believer in luck, but there are times...
Recently I've gotten in the habit of playing Texas Hold'em online, not for money, but for points that can eventually be exchanged for "prizes". For the first few weeks, it was fun, and I did fairly well on occasion. My best night was taking 1,000 points and parlaying it into about 79,000. That was among the top 20 that day, on a large site with many games going concurrently. I think that proves that I know how to play, but there IS a great deal of luck in Texas Hold'em.

My experience over the past week or so has been so miserable that it is virtually beyond my belief. Almost all hands, if I had stayed in to the end, I would have had nothing better than a small pair. Often, I've had excellent cards in the hole, only to have nothing similar appear on the board. Today, for example, TWICE I had a pair of Kings in the hole. That's the 2nd best deal possible, second only to a pair of Aces. In both those hands, my pair never improved, and the hands were won by others who had poor hole cards, such as the 9-5 that ended up winning with a full house, nines over fives. In a real money game, of course, the player probably wouldn't have stayed in with the poor 9-5.

Any poker player knows that "shit happens" and good hands often don't work out as winners, but my cards have been so incredibly bad that it is actually SCARY. I'm beginning to feel as if I'm out of sync with the universe... that my tuning dial slipped and we're just not operating on the same frequencies.

If it were just online poker, I could ignore it, but I play other card games that involve both luck and skill, and I've been losing more often at them too... games that I usually win more than lose. Fortunately, this bad streak costs me nothing except frustration, but I don't think I'll be taking any REAL gambles until it ends.