Uncle John’s Curiously Compelling Bathroom Reader (68 page)

Working with the casinos and using the MIT yearbooks to build a new database, Griffin and her team helped develop some of the first facial-recognition software. Using images taken from the hundreds of security cameras on the casino floor, a suspected card counter’s face could be compared against the computer database and picked up before he or she reached the blackjack tables. Once the Amphibians learned of the casinos’ “secret weapon,” they knew their card-counting days in America were over. So they decided to take their show on the road. They went to Europe.

THE LAST STAND

For three weeks the Amphibians—Dukach, Lilienkamp, and Bloch—played and won in London, Paris, and other major gambling locales. Finally they arrived at the mecca of gambling—the Grand Casino in Monte Carlo. The evening started well. All three played the same table, and they were winning. Then Katie Lilienkamp decided to take a potty break. On her way back to the table she was stopped by four security guards and ushered into a side room.

Semyon Dukach and Andy Bloch were already there. A picture of the three of them was scanned and uploaded to the Griffin Investigations office in Las Vegas. The Internet had made the Las Vegas database a global one, so when the identification came back positive (since they were all known Las Vegas card counters), they were unceremoniously shown the door. As Bloch recalled, “The guy said if we ever set foot in the country again we were going to be really hurt.”

Wisely, the Amphibians chose that moment to disband their club and retire.

ENDGAME

The war between the casinos and the best card counters in the world was over. As for the Amphibians, they went on with their lives. Although they had won lots of money, the whole operation had been mostly a lark, an intriguing hobby that paid out as much in adrenaline as it did cash. (None of the MIT groups will say how much cash they won.) “I love playing,” Semyon Dukach said later. “I love beating the casinos, knowing that my team was ahead of them, and tricking this huge $50 billion industry.” Remember, what they did was not illegal (only Taft’s personal computer fell into that category). Katie Lilienkamp went back to MIT and became an engineer. Andy Bloch became a professional poker player. Dukach teaches blackjack for a living.

Owls cannot move their eyes. (They have to move their heads.)

And what about Edward Thorp, the genius who started it all? He took his mastery of probability theory to the biggest gambling table of all: Wall Street. He founded hedge funds and made untold fortunes managing them using techniques based on his understanding of the odds—and his willingness to place well-calculated bets.

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GAMBLING TRIVIA

• The expression “rolling the bones” means to roll dice. And it used to be literal. Dice were made from animal bones—the Romans used sheep’s knuckles—for thousands of years.

• The oldest known dice with regular sides were found in northern Iraq. They’re made of baked clay and date to about 3000 B.C.

• President Richard Nixon won $6,000 playing poker in his first two months in the U.S. Navy during World War II. He used it to help fund his first campaign for Congress. (He won that, too.)

• More than 50 million decks of cards are sold in the U.S. every year.

• Do you know the book
According to Hoyle
? It’s considered the seminal book on the rules of poker (and many other games of chance). It refers to Edmond Hoyle, who wrote the book
A Short Treatise on the Game of Whist
in 1742 (whist was a popular card game at the time). Hoyle died 150 years before poker was invented.

The Eiffel Tower is repainted every seven years. (The paint weighs 60 tons.)

RALLY ’ROUND THE FLAG

Every country has one of its own; so do the queen of England and the president of the United States. Here’s a look at the history and traditions associated with flags.

P
OLE POSITION
If you had to guess what came first, the flagpole or the flag, what would your answer be? If you guessed the flag, you guessed wrong: The pole predates the flag by thousands of years. It dates back to prehistoric times, when rulers of civilizations as diverse as the Aztecs, the Mongols, the Persians, and the Egyptians carried decorated ceremonial staffs or spears as symbols of their authority. These staffs were often topped with ornaments carved in the shape of animals, gods, or other religious symbols. Some were also decorated with feathers, horse tails, strips of cloth, or dried grasses, which gave the staff a broomlike appearance. Soldiers marched with these staffs in ceremonial processions and even carried them into battle.

It wasn’t until after the Chinese discovered the secret of making silk in about 2,700 B.C. that they became the first civilization to attach banners to ceremonial staffs. Silk was well suited for the purpose—it was lightweight and strong, which allowed flags to flow freely, even in the lightest breeze. In the centuries that followed, flags spread to Mongolia, India, and Persia, and then to Rome and on to the rest of Europe.

QUITE A SIGHT

These early banners had important ceremonial and symbolic value, just as national flags do today. They also served a practical purpose. They could be seen from great distances in battle, which meant generals could follow the course of the fighting by watching the flags, and even use them to signal subordinates. Flapping flags also indicated how strongly and in which direction the wind was blowing, which enabled archers to adjust and improve their aim.

Wardrobe malfunction: Jayne Mansfield “popped out of her dress” during the 1957 Oscars.

“Defending the flag” was more than just an expression—soldiers literally fought to defend their colors, and if the person carrying the flag was killed or wounded, the other soldiers “rallied around the flag” to prevent it from being captured by the enemy. If the flag was lost, the battle was more likely to end in defeat.

FLAG ETIQUETTE

There is no single international set of guidelines detailing how national flags should be handled and displayed. Nevertheless, many countries have adopted similar rules. For example:

Respecting the Flag

• National flags should be displayed during daylight hours and taken down at sunset. They should only be left up all night if they are well illuminated, and they should not be allowed to fly if the weather is so severe that the flag could be damaged.

• Flags should be treated with respect—never made into clothing or used as curtains, tablecloths, and so on. Indoors, they should not touch the floor; outside, they should not touch the ground or water. Flags should not be printed on napkins, shopping bags, or anything intended to be disposable.

• The national flag has precedence over regional, local, and other flags. In ceremonies in which more than one flag is being raised, the national flag should be raised first, followed by state, county, and city flags, in that order; and it should be lowered last.

Flying Many Flags

• In centuries past, it was common in wartime for a conquering army to communicate its victory over the enemy by hoisting its battle flag over the enemy’s on a single flagpole. Because of this, when the flags of more than one nation are displayed together, each flag must be flown on its own flagpole, and every flag must be flown at the same height.

• At gatherings hosted by an international organization, such as the United Nations or the Olympic Games, national flags are displayed in alphabetical order, according to the official language of the host country. For example, in England, the Spanish flag is alphabetized by the letter S, for “Spain.” In Mexico, where Spanish is spoken, it would be alphabetized under E, for “España.”

Poll result: 80% of Hollywood executives believe there’s a link…

The Host Country’s Flag

At gatherings hosted by a particular country, it is common for the flag of the host country to be displayed in a special position of honor. That position depends on how many flags are being flown and in what configuration. If two flags are flown, the host country’s flag should be flown to the left of the other flag, as seen by observers. If three flags are flown, it should be flown from the middle pole. If four or more flags are flown, it should be on the left again, or two host country flags may be flown, one at each end.

If the flags are flying from flagpoles organized in a circle, the host flag should fly from the place of greatest prominence, as seen by viewers as they approach or enter the circle.

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POLI-TALKS

Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) describes the Internet

“There’s one company now that you can sign up with and you can get a movie delivered to your house daily by delivery service. Okay. And currently it comes to your house, it gets put in the mailbox when you get home and you change your order but you pay for that, right. But this service isn’t going to go through the Internet and what you do is you just go to a place on the Internet and you order your movie and guess what, you can order 10 of them delivered to you and the delivery charge is free. Ten of them streaming across that Internet and what happens to your own personal Internet?

“I just the other day—an Internet was sent to me by my staff at 10 o’clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the Internet commercially…

“No, I’m not finished! I want people to understand my position, I’m not going to take a lot of time. They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the Internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It’s not a truck. It’s a series of tubes. And if you don’t understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it’s going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.”

…between TV violence and real violence.

LINCOLN’S DUEL

Politics can be a dirty, nasty business. And this forgotten bit of Americana reminds us that some people take it very seriously.

T
HEM’S FIGHTIN’ WORDS
In 1842 a scandalous letter to the editor appeared in the
Sangamo Journal
in Springfield, Illinois. The newspaper was loyal to the Whig party (forerunner of the Republican party), and, not surprisingly, the target of the letter was a member of the opposition Democrats—Illinois state auditor James J. Shields.

The letter was biting. Signed by “Aunt Becca” from “The Lost Townships,” it mocked Shields in every possible way: as an auditor, as an American, even as a man. Among many other insults, “Aunt Becca” described Shields as “a ballroom dandy, floatin’ about on the earth without heft or substance, just like a lot of cat-fur where cats had been fightin’.” The attack became the talk of Illinois, and Shields, known as a vain and pompous man, was enraged. He threatened to find out who wrote the letter and to “meet them on the field of honor.”

AUNTIE ABE

Illinois was in terrible financial shape in 1842, as was most of the United States. The Panic of 1837, one of the worst economic depressions in the country’s history, had left the state in enormous debt. Shields, as state auditor, took the brunt of the blame, even though it was no fault of his: he had been appointed to the office in 1839. The state’s mounting debt culminated in the closing of the State Bank of Illinois in 1842, and Shields ordered that notes from that bank would no longer be accepted for tax payments. People were enraged—and the Whigs saw an opportunity to score some political points. One of them was a young congressman named Abraham Lincoln. Known already for his caustic wit and sarcasm, he had penned the letter from “Aunt Becca.”

Soon after news of the letter and Shields’s response spread, another letter appeared from “Aunt Becca,” this one written by two of Lincoln’s friends, Julia Jayne and Mary Todd (the future Mrs. Lincoln). Their letter was even more inflammatory than Lincoln’s: “I will give him a choice, however, in one thing,” it said in response to Shields’s fighting words, “and that is whether, when we fight, I shall wear breeches or he petticoats, for I presume this change is sufficient to place us on an equality.”

Duels and don’ts: In Paraguay, duelling is perfectly legal…

Shields went to the editor of the newspaper and demanded to know who had written the letters. The editor, as instructed, told him it was Lincoln (who didn’t want to get his friends in trouble). Shields wrote an angry letter to Lincoln and demanded an immediate retraction. Lincoln replied that if the request were made a bit more gentlemanly, he might honor it. That only made Shields angrier—and he publicly challenged Lincoln to a duel.

IT’S ON

By this point, Lincoln realized that the situation was getting out of hand—but he had to accept the challenge. He was a politician, and duels were still respected shows of a man’s courage. (It may also have had something to do with Lincoln’s desire to impress Mary Todd.) In any case, he accepted Shields’s challenge, and the upcoming match between the two politicians was the biggest news story in Illinois.

Because Lincoln was the one who had been challenged, the choice of location and weapons was his. Dueling was illegal in Illinois, so he chose an island in the Mississippi River between Illinois and Missouri, the island being part of Missouri. For weapons, he chose cavalry broadswords.

The fight was to take place in a circle 10 feet across and 12 feet deep, with a plank across the middle that neither man could cross. This, historians say, was Lincoln’s way of saying how ridiculous he thought the whole thing was—but it also gave him a distinct advantage if they were actually going to fight. He was 6'4" and long-armed; Shields was much shorter. Judge William H. Herndon, Lincoln’s friend and law partner, wrote, “There is little doubt that the man who had swung a beetle [a heavy wooden hammer] and driven iron wedges into gnarled hickory logs could have cleft the skull of his antagonist, but he had no such intention.” Lincoln hoped Shields would see his disadvantage and call the fight off, but Shields wasn’t about to back down.