Season 6, Episode 9 October 1, 2023

Hello! Thank you for putting your ear to the Listening Tube! I’m your host, Bob Woodley. On this episode, we’ll hear about marginalized groups, the women of the French Revolution, and online gambling. But first (Not the Headlines!)

Recent technology has created a strange relationship between clothing and sound. I first noticed when a buddy of mine had a shirt that would light up to the sound around him. Not the whole shirt, but a sort of a bar graph with different colors that would get brighter and taller as the sound got louder. Like a digital VU meter, but on a t-shirt. I thought that was pretty cool. Then when my wife and I were in Las Vegas this past spring, there were all kinds of clothing items and accessories with the same sound-reactive technology. Not just t-shirts, but hats and backpacks and all kinds of stuff. When light reacts with the sound of music, it can enhance the experience of listening. That’s why rock bands started using colored lights that flashed and moved in coordination with the music. By the way, Pink Floyd was the first to do it. 

Being able to see a real-time reaction to sound give people who can’t hear a visual clue that there is sound around them, even if they can’t hear it. There’s another way deaf people can relate to sound: They can feel it. If it’s loud enough, or if it makes the floor vibrate. Sometimes at a rock concert, you can feel the bass in your chest, deaf or not. That’s what makes a shirt you can wear to feel sounds and music attractive to me. I’m not totally deaf, but I have only one working ear since March of 2020. I haven’t been to a big indoor rock concert since then, and I’m not sure I should. But I have been to the symphony a few times and enjoy that. But the Lyric Opera of Chicago has made it possible for deaf and hard of hearing people to experience sound in a tactile way. The stage has strategically placed microphones that are connected to a computer brain that transforms the sounds into vibrations on different places on the shirt to correspond with the different instruments and voices and where they are on the stage. As the people who make the system call it, a symphony on your skin. Not only will this technology help deaf and hard of hearing people experience music in a whole new way, people who have no hearing problems could also enjoy the enhanced experience! The shirt has 16 motors, according to cute circuit dot com, and they can be programmed to correspond with instruments and voices on the stage. I gotta tell ya, I would love to try it! 

A story about it on Axios says, “ The force of the music and voices matches the intensity of the vibrations delivered through the shirt, so faint singing creates light tapping near the clavicle while the bass drum is a strong, rhythmic pounding on the lower back. People can feel melody, countermelody, the different rhythms that you naturally have in classical music.” I wonder where the sound of my voice would touch the person wearing the shirt. I hope it tickles your ribs a little.

People who have tried it, love it. One said it give you tactile access to the volume, and, although she’s deaf, she said she was able to actually hear the music that was helping to cue the actors. If you’re reading the transcript of this program instead of listening to it, I hope you get access to this type of technology soon. Being able to feel the sounds around you will add a whole new dimension to your life. 

In other (Not the Headlines), a legal settlement between a bank and a government has gone relatively unnoticed. That’s probably because so many wealthy and well-connected people want to keep it that way. All of the players in this story are the kind who are happy to pay large sums of money in order to keep things out of the press, and in a way that admits no guilt. In this case, JP Morgan bank agreed to pay 75 million dollars to the Virgin Islands. As you may recall, Jefferey Epstein had a sprawling estate there, where it’s alleged terrible things happened to sex slaves, many of whom were children. As it turns out, the Virgin Islands investigation revealed that JP Morgan bank was enabling the activity by providing financial transaction services to Epstein. There was supposed to be a trial, which was set to begin next month, but JP Morgan bank settled instead. The suit against JP Morgan was seeking more than 190 million dollars, so a 75 million dollar settlement probably seemed like a good deal. I have to wonder why the Virgin Islands offered a settlement at all. But the settlement and how the money will be spent on programs to help victims of domestic abuse, trafficking and other crimes, according to the AP story, and mental health services for the survivors of Epstein Island isn’t the story here. The story here is that JP Morgan facilitated the financial transactions of the sex trafficking operation. So that means they know who the customers were. Everybody’s wondering where the little black book of Jeffrey Epstein is. People want to know why the customers haven’t been brought to justice, only the providers of the service. The rest of us deserve to know who Jeffrey Epstein’s customers were. We deserve to know if any of those people are somebody we might vote for, or someone who owns a company that makes a product we might buy. The world has noticed that only the providers of the service, specifically Jeffrey Epstein and Gisell Whatever her name is. None of the customers have been revealed. Sure, its sick that this kind of service was, and is, provided in the first place, but if it didn’t have a need to fill, it wouldn’t have any value. As we can see from the wealth of the provider and the customers, it has great value. In this case, only the very wealthy who seek out this kind of pleasure were customers of Jeffrey Epstein. They are as guilty as anyone, and are the driving force behind this type of service (no pun intended). 

There are people who know. There are survivors, one woman is in prison for her participation. And now we know that JP Morgan has records that possible point the way to Epstein’s clientele. Someone in the Justice Department needs to step up and get a hold of those bank records through whatever legal means possible, and come clean with the American People and the rest of the world, because I’m sure it wasn’t just Americans who were customers, and round up the criminals who are spending their money ruining the lives of children.

Let’s Go Back liner

1763

George III of Great Britain issues British Royal Proclamation of 1763, closing aboriginal lands in North America north and west of the Allegheny Mountains to white settlements. This was a problem with the settlers of the colonies, who wanted to expand west. Why should the King of England have a say-so in how the population in the colonies expands? Well, he was trying to respect the people who already lived here. But as the king should have known, there is no stopping progress.

Native American peoples, particularly those living in Canada, regard the British Royal Proclamation of 1763 as the first official recognition of the rights of native people.

1789

George Washington sends the proposed Constitutional amendments (The United States Bill of Rights) to the States for ratification. Well, as we all know, they were ratified, and have become the bedrock of freedom and liberty. What often happens now is that the rights of some people collide with the rights of other people, and sometimes the courts have to rule. For example, transexuality and transgenderism have blurred some lines in women’s sports. Rules have not kept up with the science of turning men into women. This is simple for me. You can act like a woman all you want, but as long as you have ever had a penis, you’re a man when it comes to sports competition. While we are all born with the same rights, sometimes so-called “marginalized groups” claim their rights are being violated. I wonder if I’m part of a marginalized group…

Look that up liner

Well, Merriam-Websters definition, relegated to a marginal position within a society or group, is pretty vague, so I think I have to go to the root word, marginal. It first points out that marginal is written or printed in the margin of a page or sheet. You know, the blank space around the words in a book. That’s the margin, so if you’re in there, you’re marginal. That’s not me. There’s a second definition, though; of, relating to, or situated at a margin or border. In other words, moved to the side, or not of central importance. Well, hell, that’s happened to me a bunch of times. By my wife alone! But wait! There’s more! The third definition of marginal is located at the fringe of consciousness. Well, that’s me, but only at the end of the fourth quarter of the last football game on Sunday night. The fourth definition of marginal is close to the lower limit of qualification, acceptability, or function : barely exceeding the minimum requirements. Well, that was definitely me in high school. I might still have some of those qualities. But the fifth definition is my favorite: relating to or being a function of a random variable that is obtained from a function of several random variables by integrating or summing over all possible values of the other variables. I might be in there somewhere! So, plainly, I am a part of a marginalized group. Well, maybe not a group. What I mean is I might be the only person currently in the group. Why don’t you join me? We’ll claim to be marginalized, and then sue the government for not protecting our rights! Even if we’re trampling other people’s rights. The cool part is, you can wear whatever you want! Thanks, George Washington! Cool wig, man!

1789

After the storming of the Bastille in France began the French Revolution, women of Paris march to Versailles to confront Louis XVI about his refusal to let it be known throughout the land the feudalist control of the country was no longer how shit was gonna get done. They also demanded bread and that the King and his court moved to Paris. French chicks. Gotta love ‘em. I believe I mentioned on this program before that I once vacationed on the French Rivera. So, I’m in this underground night club. By underground I mean it was literally under ground. Anybody could find it. I did. So walk up to the bar and look around, and I’m pretty much alone except for the bartender, who luckily spoke English as well as French, and four nicely dressed women who were in a group to my right. It was just before 11 pm, and the nightlife on the Rivera doesn’t really ramp up until after midnight. When I asked the bartender for what I recall was a gin and tonic, I told him I would like to buy a round of drinks for the ladies at the bar. He said, “Why?” He knew I was American by the way I was dressed and my haircut, which was regulation 35-10. I said, “I’m just being a gentleman.”

He walked over to the ladies and explained to them that the American wanted to buy each of the ladies a drink. They all looked over at me, two of them gave a little wave of acknowledgment. Soon the place filled up like water pouring into the New York City subway when they get six inches of rain in 12 hours. I witnessed the greatest club DJ ever, and I didn’t understand a word he said. Those four women took turns dancing with me. I had the time of my life! The DJ was sponsored by a blue jean brand, and they had a contest where people had to take off their pants and put on a brand-new pair of Buffalo blue jeans as fast as they could. We had a blast, until eventually, the four women disappeared one by one, because, as it turn out, they were prostitutes.

1835

The Texas Revolution begins with the Battle of Gonzales: Mexican soldiers attempt to disarm the people of Gonzales, Texas, but encounter stiff resistance from a hastily assembled militia. Texas might need another revolution. The invasion of illegal crossings of the U.S/Mexican border is and unprecidented assault on our soverenty and national security. Texas isn’t getting any help from the federal government. Not only is the federal government not helping, they are aiding in the invasion. Democrats in congress won’t even acknowledge the problem. When asked, they deny what’s obvious to anyone who sees what’s going on! They actually claim the border is secure when thousands of people cross into the United States every day, not at points of legal entry, but around them. Efforts to impede illegal entry have been hampered by Biden administration policies. The Biden administration sued Arizona to get the state to remove shipping containers placed at the border as a makeshift wall. When Texas put floating barriers in the middle of the Rio Grand, the Biden administration ordered they be removed. It literally asks the question, “Who’s side are they on?”

1864

The Indian city of Calcutta is almost totally destroyed by a cyclone; 60,000 die. Climate Change! Said nobody.

1876

The American Library Association was founded. Are these the same people who have a website with a tab for banned books even though they don’t name any? Why yes they are! Once you click on the tab, they become the “the most challenged books.” Because there are no banned books in America. The American Library Association has lost its way, and now advocates not for knowledge nor the love of reading, but for a fund-raising scheme that tricks people into believing there’s a widespread movement to ban books about which the left is passionate, like LGTBQIA2S+ issues, when the only thing happening is parents are trying to establish age appropriate times for their child’s exposure to those issues. The American Library Association wants you to believe that if someone thinks there should be an age restriction on literature that describes what would be pornographic if were an actual photograph are trying to ban the book. That’s simply not true. You have to read between the lines with the American Library Association, because they’re trying to fool you.

1903

The High Court of Australia sat for the first time. And boy were their legs tired...

1914

World War I: first aerial combat resulting in an intentional fatality. Well, it was actually the second first time. Now, you’re probably thinking, wait, I’m not sure this time. You could be thinking, “But Bob, you can’t have a second first time.” or you might be thinking, “But Bob, you can’t die twice.” Whichever it is, I can explain. The first time was a kamakazi mission, but it wasn’t a Japanese guy. It was a Russian guy who rammed his plane into another, killing everyone aboard both planes. That’s really not the ideal way to do it. That happened about a month before a French pilot, along with his mechanic/gunner shot down a German plane on purpose, without killing themselves in the process. 

1944

Royal Canadian Air Force pilots shoot down the first German jet fighter over France. That German engineering is legendary, but they had a lot more luck with printing presses than flying machines.

1949

The German Democratic Republic (East Germany) is formed. It would cease to exist this week in 1990.

1959

U.S.S.R. probe Luna 3 transmits the first ever photographs of the far side of the Moon. Much to our surprise, it wasn’t as pock marked as the side we can see from Earth.

1997

The second largest cash robbery in U.S. history occurs at the Charlotte, North Carolina office of Loomis, Fargo and Company. An FBI investigation eventually results in 24 convictions and the recovery of approximately 95% of the $17.3 million in cash which had been taken. How times and the value of the dollar have changed. Target announced this week that it would be closing 9 stores because of organized retail theft. How much retail theft? A story on WRBL dot com cites a Target statement in May that estimated losses this year from theft could be as much as 1.2 billion dollars. 

Phone and email liner

Sports is something a lot of people enjoy. There are a lot of different kinds of sports, and each one has an element or two that attracts people’s attention. There’s something about the way athletes push the limits of human accomplishment. How fast can people run? How far can people run? How much weight can a person lift? How far can we throw something? And those are just some of the bare-bones things. From there, we try to not just throw things, but also catch things. We try to hit things with other things, like balls with bats or targets with axes. While balls of different shapes and sizes dominate most of the competitions we use for entertainment, there are also pucks and discs and darts and other shapes of things we throw or aim. Even driving a car is considered a sport because of the endurance and planning it takes to be successful. 

People are attracted to sports because it shows us how great we can be. We can witness the accomplishments of homosapiens in real time, setting records and winning contests that advance the physical possibilities of the human body. Everyday the bar is set higher. Yet there are still people who dedicate themselves to higher accomplishments. Those who look at the records and consider it a challenge. Those who figure out a better way. Every once in a while, a generational player will come along. Someone who dominates their chosen field, whether it be an individual sport or a position on a team. Someone who changes the game. 

The intrigue of sports also invites a third-party aspect. That of sports gambling. Sports gambling is a billion-dollar industry that has grown significantly in the last few years. For decades, it was an illegal business, with neighborhood bookies taking bets. And while some neighborhood bookies still exist in certain states, the bulk of sports betting has been appropriated by state governments and the businesses that create the mechanism. Sports betting has become a huge revenue generator for many states. Back in the day, if you wanted to gamble on sports, you had to go to Nevada. Then New Jersey. Now sports betting is legal in nearly three dozen states, according to a cbs sports story from five weeks ago. In fact, they wrote a whole story about the gambling laws of each state where some form of it is legal. The laws vary widely. In some states, you have to show up in person to make a bet on a sports event. Some states don’t allow bets during the game. Some states only allow gambling on professional sports. The gambling explosion began in 2018 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states should regulate gambling. Now they do. The same way states regulate lotteries and liquor laws and abortions.

Most states that allow gambling keep a very tight grip on it, with stringent controls about the games themselves, the odds of winning, and the integrity of those who operate the places where gambling takes place. Many states that don’t allow gambling still have state lotteries. Some state lotteries have moved more toward active gambling rather than passive gambling. Allow me to explain the difference. Passive gambling is the kind of gambling where numbers are drawn at certain time, or times each day. Usually no more than twice. So the gambler buys a ticket and waits to see if his numbers match those that were drawn. Many private clubs have a similar system. When you walk in, you sign a sheet of paper, or “the book” to show you were in attendance that day, and if your membership number is drawn at the end of the night, you win the jackpot. It’s a progressive jackpot, so it grows larger with every day that nobody wins. The same with state lotteries. It’s passive because sometimes you might even forget to check the ticket for a few days. It’s a mostly harmless way to invest a small amount with the possibility of a big payoff, but when you play, you understand the odds are very slim you’ll win. But in the meantime, you can fantasize about what you would do if you did. For a couple of bucks, you get to imagine yourself where you always wanted to be.

Active gambling is a different animal. State lotteries began moving toward active gambling with scratch-off tickets. There’s no limit on how many you can buy, and without any discipline, it’s easy to pour a lot of money into the hope that you’ll get the jackpot. And you can do it very quickly with little return on your investment. State lotteries moved into keno games, with monitors in bars where you could bet up to 20 dollars every five minutes. That’s 240 dollars an hour. These games are closer to what you might find at a casino, when it comes to how quickly you can spend your money. Just like slot machines and video poker, keno and scratch-offs will take your money as long as the place is open. That’s why casinos don’t normally close. But your casino might be a convenience store with a gambling machine in it, or rows of scratch-offs on display. 

Regardless of where or how you play, most of us will end up paying for the entertainment of gambling, just like any other form of entertainment. Sure, some people, a slim percentage, will win a lot of money. For some it’s a blessing, for others, a curse. But the house always wins in the long run, and most of us end up on the losing end. Las Vegas wasn’t built on winners. Speaking of Las Vegas, when I lived there, there was no state income tax, and the electric company basically paid a kickback to the government to cover the cost of the lost tax revenue. Las Vegas goes through a lot of electricity. Anyway, that’s how I recall it. Plus, Nevada doesn’t have a state lottery competing with the private sector casinos. So, basically your income tax was calculated by how much electricity you used. But legal gambling made it possible for Nevada to do that. When other states began to legalize gambling, they didn’t say, “Hey, if we legalize gambling, we’ll eliminate the state income tax!” Nor did they discontinue the state lotteries that compete for your gambling dollars. States that came to the gambling table more recently haven’t provided any benefit to the citizens as a whole in the form of tax breaks. Some states, like Pennsylvania, promised lower property taxes in exchange for slot machines and table games. While some relief did come, it was only about half of what was promised ten years after gambling was make legal. This year, statistics on PA dot gov show that gambling in Pennsylvania, in just the first six months of the year, generated 365, 077,313 dollars and 85 cents of revenue for the state. Up 3.6 million from the same period last year. Yet, according to think advisor dot com, Pennsylvania has the forth highest tax burden in the country, behind only New York, Connecticut and Illinois. Pennsylvania, New York and Illinois have more liberal gambling laws than Nevada. Nevada has no state lottery nor racetrack betting. But Nevada does have on-line gambling, just like 16 other states. Because going to the convenience store to buy a lottery ticket, or going to the casino to have a drink and play the slot machines wasn’t enough. States with on-line gambling have forsaken the idea of gambling as a form of entertainment that can in some way benefit the people of the state. We just want you to sit at home, or at work or in a public park and gamble your paycheck away. We’ll put an 800-number at the bottom of the screen to try to keep you from going so far that you contemplate suicide or shoot up a bunch of people at a concert. In the meantime, we’ll bombard you with advertisements with Kevin Hart and retired athletes promoting all the different ways you can make the game more exciting by betting your rent on the outcome. The same thing for which current professional athletes are prohibited from doing, and why Pete Rose isn’t in the Baseball hall of fame. But there’s so much money to be had, that the online gambling companies can pay top dollar for endorsements from guys like Ryan Fitzpatrick, a Harvard graduate and NFL quarterback who has now been reduced to talking head and sleazy pitchman. Hawaii and Utah are the only states where no form of gambling is legal. Nevada knows how to do legal gambling. They’ve been at it for a long time. They’ve had to pull the organized crime roots out of it first, but they did. Nevada keeps a close watch on it. Casino owners are held to high standards. I remember when I was a news reporter there for K-News radio, the manager of a famous downtown casino was summoned for a drug test, as all casino executives might be at any time. It was a standard hair test. They cut some of the hair from your head, as close to the scalp as possible. They’d take the quarter-inch closest to your scalp and chop it up and test it, which provides a window of the last month of any drug activity. Well, this guy refuses to show up for the drug test, and gets summoned into court instead. He shows up to court with all the hair shaved off of his body. He would eventually lose his gaming license for his association with criminals. In other states, gambling has been a boom for some and a nightmare for others. Atlantic City was supposed to be the Las Vegas of the east coast, but they didn’t gamble on Pennsylvania and New York also opening casinos. Atlantic City was transformed, but then hard times came and the revenue dropped, leaving shells where once were casinos. The difference is that Nevada started out that way. The system was built around the gambling industry. In states that jumped on the gambling bandwagon later, like Pennsylvania, it’s only seen as a revenue-generator, not a lifestyle. That’s why on-line betting is so attractive. It doesn’t just mean the casino never has to close, it means less time between bets. Just like buying a lottery ticket and waiting until that night for the winning numbers to be drawn is passive gambling, and many people participate every day with little harm done to most while one person wins big, it isn’t enough to satisfy the coffers of state governments. Gambling has provided another way for the government to take our money. State lotteries weren’t enough. The goal has become to provide a way for the citizens to be able to gamble as often as is humanly possible. Right now, that’s as fast as you can touch the screen of your phone. And there’s a multitude of ways to place a bet. You can gamble on the final score of a game, the difference in the scores, how many three-point shots were made, how many field goals were kicked, how many home runs were hit, how many panes of glass were shattered in the arena. Now you can even bet in real time. Who will make the next free throw or will the kicker make this extra point? Not every bet is that cut and dried. There are odds on bets, and the oddsmakers get paid by the casinos. And somehow, they’ve been able to do a pretty good job of predicting what will happen. That’s why sports betting generates so much profit. When betting is managed properly, the house always comes out ahead. But the house is also the state. The state sets the rules and the rules always favor the house. It’s not gambling for the state, it’s only gambling for you. States like Pennsylvania are using on-line gambling as a way to steal your money. The odds are stacked against you. Even if you think you’re a sports genius, and maybe you are, the other on-line games like blackjack and roulette and poker are all digital and the program is designed to regulate winning. It’s not really gambling at all. The outcome is predetermined. The only variable is where you fall on the scale of winners and losers. A majority of us will be losers. A few will be winners. The state will always come out ahead. 

Am I a staunch critic of gambling? It might sound like it. I have mixed feelings. I buy the lottery tickets and wait for the numbers to be drawn, but I don’t buy them all the time. My wife and I visited Las Vegas this past spring and we spent about an hour in a casino while we were there. We found better things to do the rest of the time. I play fantasy football in a league that you have to pay to get in, so that’s gambling. I sign the book at the club when I go in. That one I’ve won a few times. Oh, and while we were in Las Vegas, I put ten dollars on the Miami Dolphins to win the Super Bowl. That’s a very passive bet, but I got good odds. But gambling isn’t something I do every day, and I don’t recommend it. Having the power to gamble in the palm of your hand 24 hours a day will cause a great deal of harm to our society. Like alcohol and nicotine, gambling is a state supported addiction. The state will take advantage of those of us who are addicted to gambling in a way that they never could with alcohol or tobacco. On-line gambling is a high that can now be delivered from an electronic device directly through your thumbs. With a frequency never before imagined. After all, the faster we can place our bets, the more money the gambling companies and the individual states bring in. Why wait 24 hours, or even 12 hours to sell another lottery ticket when you can sell them every second of every day? On-line gambling makes it possible.

Full disclosure: My late wife was addicted to gambling. She had lived in Las Vegas before I met her. Her parents lived there. We visited Las Vegas multiple times without any indication that gambling was a problem. But when we moved there, the gambling bug took over. I’ve seen first had what a gambling addiction looks like, and it isn’t pretty. It may not be as physically debilitating as a drug addiction, but it comes close. But like other addictions, a gambling addiction effects those around you as well, and especially those who love you. When I see how pervasive gambling is, and how our state governments are using it to gather revenue, I can’t help but think about the harm being caused to families with habitual gamblers. 

So, how much harm? Well, if gambling is all about money, let’s look at it from a financial standpoint. A Forbes Magazine story from January of this year examines 2022 revenues and prognosticates about 2023. Keep in mind that when we talk about gambling revenue, we’re literally talking about how much money people lost. Money that didn’t go toward a mortgage or rent. Money that didn’t go toward food or school supplies. Money that didn’t go toward utility bills or gas for the car or prescriptions for preexisting conditions. So, how much money is surrendered by American people to gambling companies and the states in which they live? Well, when the story was written, only 11 months of the 2022 tally was counted, but it had already beat the record set the year before. Forbes says 54.93 billion dollars were taken in from American gamblers last year. The same story quoted an industry analyst as saying that despite inflation and the poor economy we currently have, he expects the revenue to grow. There are two forces at play that would indicated he’s right. The first is that gambling is an addiction, and addictions don’t play second fiddle to the economy, and the rise of gambling in the palm of your hand makes it about 1.9 billion dollars a year easier to lose your money to gambling.

So, the next time you see a movie star or sports legend peddling on-line gambling on television, ask yourself how long it will be until we see cigarette commercials again. Or maybe commercials for cocaine or heroine. After all, gambling has the same detrimental effect on American families and individual lives. 

The Listening Tube is written and produce by yours truly. Copyright 2023. Thank you for putting your ear to The Listening Tube. Subscribe today. I’m your host, Bob Woodley for thou ad infinitum.