kanooker

Poker teaches you humility, emotional control and, most of all, patience. You realize that life in general is one big game of chance that you can kind of sort of control, but often is subject to just plain dumb luck, and that life is about how you react to that luck. To use an obnoxiously tired metaphor that's actually appropriate here, you learn that life will deal you a shitty hand every now and then (sometimes one after another for months on end). But when it does, you just have to toss the cards aside and wait for the next hand to come your way. The game goes on.

That's why gamblers tend to be a philosophical bunch.

When your car breaks down and you need a $700 emergency repair ... oh well, shit happens. When your credit card gets hacked and thousands get charged on it ... whatever, it's just a minor annoyance. When your girlfriend dumps you ... fuck it, you'll meet someone else. They've felt all of these ups and downs before, at the table. Poker takes the kind of dramatic ups and downs you'd normally experience over the course of a decade working in an office and plays them out in one night.

Good stuff, thank you.

If he wasn't lying about having a gun and a permit I doubt he'd be lying about reaching for his wallet.

Fair question. Our readers are probably the ultimate check.

I thought you might say that. Unfortunately media is about identifying a market and meeting it's needs ie fox news and msnbc. There really isn't an incentive to get to the truth because it seems most people are concerned with confirming their biases and media needs to satisfy it's shareholders. I think we need to find a more organic approach. Thanks for the reply.

Do you think there is an inherent flaw in our system of media and journalism? What I mean is there is every incentive to make a mountain out of a molehill because ratings and money come first. What independent controls could we institute to keep the media honest? IE what is the media's check and balance?

FWIW, I know very few reporters who'd deliberately lie either for political reasons or to make readers happy.

That's part of it, but it's more about reporters/journalists trying to make money and a name for themselves. They sensationalize and/or lie in order to take advantage of people's fears, biases and curiosity for page views. What's the control for that, because it seems once they put something out there it's hard to take back.