Friday, November 27, 2009

Post Thanksgiving

Mirage hasn't been off her feet in like four months, even when sleeping. Today she lay down and dozed off, lots of twitching. Mirage is an adult female horse. I am off of I-5 enjoying staying with our casino boss and horse masseuse family.

Casino Math balances Supermarket Math in providing a special case institution for anchoring generic math concepts. We get inside the business of X, as a way of learning math associated with doing X's job.

We might have gone with Banking Math but that takes some of the edge off, is less nakedly suggestive of our probability themes, lacks the entertainment value to compete on today's TV.

Supermarket Math
is prosaic enough. Too prosaic? We might have said Mall Math. Bazaar Math could be good (yes, opposite Cathedral Math perhaps).

Mirage is back on her feet, pacing about in her paddock. I'm not far from Camano Island, where I met up with Roz Savage that time, a day and some years ago.

The tribes in this region were suffering homelessness, were in need of methadone clinics. Today, many more are in line for academic degrees. The casinos have provided the modicum of prosperity needed to jump start other enterprises, will continue to provide seed funding.

Another theme of Casino Math is that what goes on under that heading (of risk taking or gambling) is not a constant, despite the persistence of old favorites. Not only do the games themselves change, but so does their ostensible purpose.

Many USA states use a lottery to fund some of their education and prison systems. Many churches use bingo. The tribes are no different in this respect. Indian gaming is about playing world game effectively, and that's not a bad thing.

One axis for further development involves pushing the decision-making to a more democratic micro-level, letting anyone register their philanthropic model by donating proceeds (one's winnings) to worthy causes (registered beneficiaries).

"Approved causes" doesn't necessarily exclude one's self (the traditional worthy in old school casinos) but also allows character building in the sense of investing in the qualities and traits of one's avatar. Play your heart out to raise funds for your school, not just yourself personally, and win more kudos thereby.

For readers just joining and wondering WTF, I am referring to some modules on WikiEducator: Martian Math, Neolithic Math, Casino Math, Supermarket Math. One may envision this as a tetrahedron of six relationships and then discuss each of these relationships.

In this blog post, I'm mostly harping on the Casino-Supermarket edge, being defensive about my choice of "Casino" by providing some historical context (a Neolithic Math spin). I'm also reintroducing my Coffee Shops Network open source business model, which revolves around philanthropic game playing in a relaxed ambiance.

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