As a younger man I loved gambling.

At age 20 I was a reporter for the Las Vegas Review-Journal earning $29 each week. I paid my weekly motel rent ($5) and bought two $5 meal tickets at a greasy spoon diner.

That left $14 each week to gamble --- at a time when Benny Binion's accepted 10 cent bets. I loved it.

Gambling is very much a part of the human experience. What can I say: I still love it and the excitement it yields.

I am spending a couple of days at the Jersey Shore. The food is good; the people are nice; the ocean is glorious --- but for me the allure is not the azure ocean but the green felt of the --- crap tables. I am gambling more than dimes. I have learned that gambling is fun when it hurts to lose but not to lose so much that it hurts too much.

I played for a few weeks in that famous (barely legal) poker game with several Supreme Court Justices. I stopped. They were playing quarter-and-a-half.

Boring.

Ben