Craftily arranged nouns, verbs, and more.
Just wanted to share that, after a long hiatus, I have written a new post on From the Ombuds. This one includes my reflections on my past year as UNLV’s Ombuds. As June 1, the first anniversary of my assuming the Ombuds role, approached, I wanted to take a few minutes to share some reflections …
Thoughts on My First Year as Ombuds | From the Ombuds Read More »
For my latest commentary, I started thinking about how two recent bits of pop culture reflect on casinos. The answer: not well: The casino gaming industry is in a funny place. For those of us inside the bubble, it’s a business brimming with regulations, compliance, and integrity. For those outside it, though, casinos are still, …
Marty Byrde, King Dice, and gaming’s enduring image problem – CDC Gaming Reports Read More »
I’ve got another commentary up today, marking another important milestone: Today, we mark another milestone of Nevada gaming history, one that reminds us how far the state and the industry have come, and how far both still have to go. On March 26, 1960, Governor Grant Sawyer, Las Vegas NAACP President Dr. James McMillan, Las …
An important anniversary for Las Vegas gaming – CDC Gaming Reports Read More »
Today’s column was a fun one to write. It started out as a simple look back at the 90th anniversary of Nevada getting gaming back, but turned into an exploration of alternate history. Today marks the anniversary of what might be the most consequential event in American gambling history: the relegalization of commercial gaming in …
I’ve got another commentary up on CDC Gaming Reports. This one is about why we shouldn’t write off conventions in Las Vegas: The casinos of the Strip were particularly vulnerable to the pandemic, not only because it put a temporary halt to gaming on casino floors. Casinos across the country (mostly) managed to emerge from …
Last week I had a commentary published on CDC Gaming Reports about the possibly already forgotten Golden Knights/Upick partnership. As usual, I tried to see the positive. Here it is: You probably have already heard the story. It raced across Twitter in a brilliant blaze last week before sputtering into dust over the weekend. The Vegas Golden …
All’s well that ends well with the Upick debacle – CDC Gaming Reports Read More »
In honor of Kefauver Day, the Mob Museum published a short article I wrote that summarized the drama of the Kefauver Committee’s hearing in Las Vegas; The U.S. Senate’s Special Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce, chaired by Tennessee Democrat Estes Kefauver, focused attention as never before on gambling-related crime as a national …
The Kefauver hearing in Las Vegas | The Mob Museum Read More »
I recently had an essay I wrote about Fallout New Vegas’s Honest Hearts DLC published on First Person Scholar. Here’s the first paragraph: As a Western set in a post-apocalyptic Mohave, Fallout: New Vegas demonstrates that the big questions that drive Western history are durable and malleable enough to survive even the (fictional) nuclear demise …
I have an article in the latest edition of the Popular Culture Review about Mario Puzo’s views on capitalism and gambling: The Godfather made him a wealthy man, but Mario Puzo’s long years as a struggling writer and childhood in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen conditioned him to treat money—and those who made a great …
I’d like to share my Neon Museum Scholar in Residence Lecture: The lecture looks at the years 1967-1988, which are the “middle child” of Las Vegas Strip casino history. People usually focus on the “classic” or “Rat Pack” era or the Mirage/megaresort era, but don’t think too much about the early corporate period. Hope you …
Scholar in Residence: David G. Schwartz – YouTube Read More »