Tali Sharot: The Optimism Bias: A Tour of the Irrationally Positive Brain. New York, Pantheon, 2011. 272 pages. People always seem to expect the best, despite the odds. As Tali Sharot discusses in THE OPTIMISM BIAS, most people have unrealistically positive expectations of their future. She does a great job of summing up much of […]
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book reviewsIf you missed it last week, here’s my latest Green Felt Journal, a look at why poker isn’t going anywhere: A lot of folks are surprised that the World Series of Poker isn’t doing so badly this year. So far, about one-third of tournament events have had record numbers of participants. Back in April, many
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Vegas SevenYesterday morning, after I read about the second homicide on the Strip in less than two weeks, I decided to write a short piece for Two Way Hard Three about why it was important for the County and Metro to get in front of the issue: But most people have the perception–or at least the
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life in vegas, Two Way Hard ThreeI had a busy day yesterday. I added a previously-written column on the history of Steel Pier right here and I wrote two pieces for Two Way Hard Three. The first was a fun little piece about Vegas insider moves: Everyone wants to feel that they’re a Vegas insider. It might be something as basic
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Two Way Hard ThreeWriting a Two Way Hard Three post about today’s announcement about the possible sale of Steel Pier, I wanted to link to an Atlantic City history column I dimly remembered having written years earlier. Since the issue of Casino Connection it originally ran in (May 2004) isn’t available online, I’m going to reproduce it here
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atlantic cityAfter talking about the street “performers” on the Strip, I figured I should discuss something totally noncontroversial in this week’s Las Vegas Business Press. So I settled on an article on the recent rollback of the gaming tavern smoking ban: Back in November 2006, a majority of voters approved the Nevada Indoor Clean Air Act,
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Las Vegas Business PressJen A. Miller. The Jersey Shore: Atlantic City to Cape May. Second Edition. Woodstock, Vermont: The Countryman Press, 2011. 207 pages. The phrase “Jersey Shore” is heard a lot these days, but mostly for the wrong reasons–shorthand for the kind of low-class self-indulgent behavior that will land you a gig on an MTV reality show
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atlantic city, book reviewsMy contribution to the coverage of the Great Sahara sale is in Vegas Seven this week: At the Sahara, NCL put 600,000 items for sale, from camel-base lamps ($150; they were the most consistently pilfered item from hotel rooms) to the wooden doors from the House of Lords restaurant ($825). The two-month liquidation sale is
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Vegas SevenEarl Swift. The Big Roads: The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries, and Trailblazers Who Created the American Superhighway. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011. 384 pages. Even if you don’t use it every day, the interstate highway system affects your life every day. Odds are the food that you eat traveled at least part-way on
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book reviewsIn today’s Green Felt Journal in Vegas Seven, I take a look back at the career of Bill Pennington, who had a much bigger impact on Las Vegas than is generally recognized: Last month the Nevada casino industry lost one of its pioneers when William N. “Bill” Pennington died at the age of 88. He
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Vegas SevenJust in case you haven’t caught it on the Twitter feed, I’ve got two new posts up on Two Way Hard Three in which I share some photos I took Monday at a media preview for the Sahara Liquidation sale. Here’s a sample: Click here for the first patr and here for the second. Enjoy!
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life in vegas, Two Way Hard ThreeThe more I’ve been thinking about the situation on the Strip, the more I’m convinced that those who have a major stake in the continued viability of the Strip as a walkable pedestrian thoroughfare really need a better response to the performers/panhandlers/salespeople who are crowding out the tourists. So I wrote an open letter to
An open letter to the NRA in the LVBP Read More »
Las Vegas Business Press, life in vegasI finally read that LA Times piece on vintage Vegas venues (yay for alliterative ledes) and something in it provoked a response in me. So I wrote a Two Way Hard Three post until I expressed something close to what I was feeling: Other people have already discussed the LA Times piece that featured “vintage
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Two Way Hard ThreeIn case you missed it, I’ve got a slightly-more-serious but still fun piece up on Two Way Hard Three about various longshots on the Las Vegas Strip: With a renewed push for a casino smoking ban in Nevada, I go to thinking: which would happen first–no smoking in a casino, or a casino dress code?
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life in vegas, Two Way Hard ThreeI’ve got a Green Felt Journal out in today’s Vegas Seven that I’d really like people to read, because I think that the topic should be a major Las Vegas public policy issue: In the past year, a new menace has appeared on the Strip. Costumed “performers” have taken their place beside smut peddlers, nightclub
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life in vegas, Vegas SevenI’ve got a pretty lengthy piece of the differing evolution of gaming regulations and transparency in gaming in Nevada, Macau, and Singapore in the latest Global Gaming Business Magazine: Today, gaming is a truly global industry. Casino gaming, which was once a small-scale business confined to a limited number of jurisdictions, has blossomed into a
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writingIn case you missed it, I’ve recently posted two Atlantic City-related pieces on Two Way Hard Three. The first is the complete text of my answers to questions Wayne Parry asked me about Atlantic City: The AP’s Wayne Parry wrote an excellent article about Atlantic City’s rise and fall. He reached out to me for
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atlantic city, Two Way Hard ThreeI found myself on a roll during the Focus Roundtable on online poker I participated in a while back, and decided to flesh out one of my ideas into a piece for the Las Vegas Business Press: Surely it’s not just patriotism that tells me Americans would take more chips from their overseas counterparts than
Patriotic argument for legal ‘net poker in the LVBP Read More »
Las Vegas Business PressI just want to give everyone a heads-up: though I still don’t have an ETA for the Sarno book, I have something new that was just published: I’ve written the chapter on gambling in the first volume of SAGE Publication’s Key Issues in Crime and Punishment series, Crime and Criminal Behavior. Here’s the cite: William
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writingJane Woolbridge and Larry Bleiberg. The 100 Best Affordable Vacations. Washington, DC: National Geographic, 2011. 288 pages. Right now, most people who like to travel are looking at stretching their budget as far as they can, so a book about affordable travel destinations is a practical idea. This book is divided into four chapters: Americana,
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