Andrew Ryan's dilemma

[Brant Gaede]

Brant,

I enjoyed your post above. Yes, Greenleaf is considered the greatest all-around player, Mosconi the greatest 14.1 and Hoppe the 3 cushion billiards honcho. Several yrs ago I discovered Efren Reyes while on Youtube. Daam, he can play.

BTW, I tried 3 cushion a few times on a 10' table. Now that's an insanely difficult game.

I still prefer 14.1 but usually play 8 ball (sissy game, luck is a factor) at my condominium's clubhouse. No one there plays anything else. Hell, no one even heard of "straight" pool.

Cheers!

-J

Efren Reyes once said the two most difficult players he went up against were Toby Sweet and Alan Hopkins. He probably beat them both. (This is, like, 20 years old.)

--Brant

that would not be tournament play, I'm pretty sure

[Derek McGowan]

Being uninstructed, I looked up Efren

That was amazing!

[Brant Gaede]

They were great shots but I've personally made even better ones while gambling too boot. Nobody evaluates a nine-ball player by that kind of shooting, but it helps make the game more enjoyable to watch. Nine-ball is a gambling game. The money at stake makes the adrenaline flow for the players and the spectators. The rise of casino gambling outside Vegas pulled the adrenaline junkies out of pool rooms into the casinos.

Here are some criteria:

1) What is the bet?

2) what, if any, is the spot or handicap the apparently weaker player has achieved? It's not how well you play, it's the game you make relative to your skill and the other guy's.

3) How good is the break? This is the single most important shot in pool. (And is it a rotating break or winner's break--the winner's break could mean, rarely, one player only getting to the table to rack the balls or to kick at the object ball from a safety while he loses seven zip.)

4) Cue ball control and safety play.

5) Run out ability--if you play a successful safety and get ball in hand you should win no less than 85% of the time or you simply aren't any kind of great player unless it's a sucker hustle.

--Brant

[dldelancey]

Hmm, maybe we can get the discussion back on topic?

Derek,

I have to agree with MSK that the city was built (no pun intended) on a bad premise. However, as you say, Ryan is well beyond that now. He does have options other than "kill the bitch" although that may be the most expedient and less costly one.

Assuming he retains ownership of the infrastructure, he could disable or dismantle it. (I only have surface familiarity with the game, so I don't know if that's the case.) He would essentially be going Galt... again.

[Selene]

Hmm, maybe we can get the discussion back on topic?

Cheese it guys, Mom's back!!

[Backlighting]

Hmm, maybe we can get the discussion back on topic?

Cheese it guys, Mom's back!!

Hide the Playboy magazines & give her a q-stick for Xmas.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I have to agree with MSK...

Another one to be framed...

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

I have to agree with MSK...

Another one to be framed...

Michael

Just print out all my OL posts and wallpaper your home with them.

--Brant

save on framing costs

[Derek McGowan]

Hmm, maybe we can get the discussion back on topic?

Derek,

I have to agree with MSK that the city was built (no pun intended) on a bad premise. However, as you say, Ryan is well beyond that now. He does have options other than "kill the bitch" although that may be the most expedient and less costly one.

Assuming he retains ownership of the infrastructure, he could disable or dismantle it. (I only have surface familiarity with the game, so I don't know if that's the case.) He would essentially be going Galt... again.

I wonder if he could go Galt again. I would think that the construction costs would have completely drained his Federal Reserve notes (though the novel doesn't exactly say) and underwater he is indeed quite rich as he owns most of the structure and leases it out to everyone who lives there and all businesses that operate there but it is all done in the local currency-Ryan dollars.

MSK definitely stopped the momentum of the question. It reminds me of chess analysis. After a game the two players, and sometimes and side line viewers, will sit and go over the moves to see if there were better moves to have been made. Sometimes you get caught up checking and rechecking all possible variations to one particular position in the game, usually the turning point or the position that won the game. The winner shows that they had rock solid play, that no matter what the opponent did, they were held steady in the web, and then someone on the outside widens the perspective by looking at the move that came before that position! Suddenly the game is completely even, or even winning for the opponent.

Thats why I tried to introduce the second dilemma of the book, one that couldn't be jumped out of in the same manner

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

MSK definitely stopped the momentum of the question.

Derek,

Sorry, I didn't mean to blow your high.

It's just that double-bind situations have a habit of sneaking in and encouraging passive agreement with unintended messages.

I'm using "double-bind" in a sense I got from reading an NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) article. It works in NLP like this. You know a person is not too crazy about meeting you. After a small set-up and small talk, you ask him, "When is a better time for you to meet, tomorrow night or next Tuesday?"

In both alternatives, you are going to meet.

If he perceives this is what you are doing, he will often balk. If he does not perceive it, he gets trapped in a "double-bind" to the meeting and chooses one of the times. This gives him the illusion that he is in control.

In your original formulation, there was a similar "double-bind" to lack of freedom. Do we keep freedom and allow the unrest to spread, or do we stifle the ring-leader to keep freedom safe? In both cases, the unstated condition for freedom is in The Place Nobody Can Leave.

The unstated message insinuated in that double-bind is that the world is a place where others (not us) set the boundaries--that this is proper to all existence--and there is no escape once we are caught within the confines of a boundary set by others.

You asked an earlier question about commitment that I will get to later. (I've been terrible busy these last few days.)

Here's an idea, though. It might be interesting to see if we can restate the original problem in a way that acknowledges the limitation but also appeals to universal values. Even if we have to forego the word freedom, such an analysis could yield interesting fruit.

Michael

[Selene]

If you want to know the real quality of a pool table reach into any pocket and grab the slate and supporting structure. Tournament and professional quality is 1 1/2 inches of slate and 1 1/2 inches of support or 3 inches thick total. Most tables are half that and essentially garbage.

--Brant

I was once a friend of Toby Sweet, the greatest nine-ball road player of all time

Brant,

I believe the slate should be 1" thick. Size should be 4 1/2' by 9', although 5' by 10' was initially used decades ago. Most tables sold today are 4' x 8' ......manufactures sought to make the game "easier" for the average player. Bars usually have 3 1/2' x 7' tables.

I learned straight pool on the 9' Brunswick Gold Crown (used in tourneys as far back as I can remember). Once saw Willie Mosconi, the greatest of all "straight pool" players, put on an exhibition while he was promoting Brunswick. I've also played on the 10' (yrs ago) & 7' (which is the common bar type). One thing is certain, the larger the table the more difficult the shot making & positioning is...especially as your eyes get older.

Rack em up! I still play

-J

http://www.brunswickbilliards.com/pool-tables/gold-crown-v

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Mosconi

JC's Pool Hall was five (5) blocks up on the right, across from a church.

Masconi played there. Old time pool hall. Right out of The Husler.

I have been playing since I was a kid and straight pool is what I love to play.

Bought Masconi's book on pool which exxponentially improved my game.

A...

[Brant Gaede]

One time in my life I played like a nine-ball genius. It was unconscious. I couldn't miss and my positioning was great. It was in rhythm. I thought I had moved up to the next level. The next day I was back to where I usually played and never played that way again.

Great players play great even if they are below par for the day and think they are playing badly. It's not that they miss shots but have to make great ones. The easier the shot the better they are playing for positioning is most of what they do. It's the cue ball, not the ball going into the pocket. Here's how they practice nine-ball (or could): break, take ball in hand, run out 85% of the time. That's their general level of competence. One-pocket is a defensive game. If you cannot win on your break, quit, unscrew your cue, leave. It doesn't matter if you are winning on yours for hours. Once you lose on yours and fail to win on the other guy's break, get out. He's a lot better than you are. (This is based on watching the play; I've never played the game. If you want to make money gambling in pool this is the game you need to master. It's extremely difficult for even the best nine-ballers in the world to make money gambling and is more true today than ever as most of the gamblers have departed for the casinos if not died off. When Alan Hopkins told a young, great nine-ball player to learn one-pocket because "there's a lot of money in one-pocket," that was 25 years ago. Pool has completely or almost completely disappeared from television.)

--Brant

[Backlighting]

If you want to know the real quality of a pool table reach into any pocket and grab the slate and supporting structure. Tournament and professional quality is 1 1/2 inches of slate and 1 1/2 inches of support or 3 inches thick total. Most tables are half that and essentially garbage.

--Brant

I was once a friend of Toby Sweet, the greatest nine-ball road player of all time

Brant,

I believe the slate should be 1" thick. Size should be 4 1/2' by 9', although 5' by 10' was initially used decades ago. Most tables sold today are 4' x 8' ......manufactures sought to make the game "easier" for the average player. Bars usually have 3 1/2' x 7' tables.

I learned straight pool on the 9' Brunswick Gold Crown (used in tourneys as far back as I can remember). Once saw Willie Mosconi, the greatest of all "straight pool" players, put on an exhibition while he was promoting Brunswick. I've also played on the 10' (yrs ago) & 7' (which is the common bar type). One thing is certain, the larger the table the more difficult the shot making & positioning is...especially as your eyes get older.

Rack em up! I still play

-J

http://www.brunswickbilliards.com/pool-tables/gold-crown-v

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Mosconi

JC's Pool Hall was five (5) blocks up on the right, across from a church.

Masconi played there. Old time pool hall. Right out of The Husler.

I have been playing since I was a kid and straight pool is what I love to play.

Bought Masconi's book on pool which exxponentially improved my game.

A...

Adam,

A bunch of friends & I, all around 16 (legal age to play), hopped on the train from Bay Ridge to 42nd.St.

Ames pool room was our destination. We all had recently seen The Hustler & knew this is where parts of the movie was filmed.

Upon entering I was approached by a stranger who asked if I wanted to play 50 points for some money. No thanks, I said, and we went up the stairs on the balcony...more tables located there. See 1:10 into the Youtube video.

Nice footage of Ames throughout. "No Gambling" signs hung on the walls. lol

I studied the book "Mosconi On Pocket Billiards" when I first started playing ( 6 or 7th. grade) Much better than the Catechism I thought...it made sense and increased my all around play multi-fold. It laid the foundation. I don't remember JC pool hall ..Jesus Christ's place?...you said it was near a church.

J:)

[Backlighting]

Brant said "I couldn't miss and my positioning was great. It was in rhythm. I thought I had moved up to the next level. The next day I was back to where I usually played and never played that way again"

I once felt that way with a particular female encounter I had.

-J

[Selene]

I studied the book "Mosconi On Pocket Billiards" when I first started playing ( 6 or 7th. grade) Much better than the Catechism I thought...it made sense and increased my all around play multi-fold. It laid the foundation. I don't remember JC pool hall ..Jesus Christ's place?...you said it was near a church.

J:)

I got the book also when I was about 12.

As to JC's Billiard Hall...I am almost sure it was right across the street from the church on 39th Avenue:

"If you look at the map carefully, you can make out some details that still exist today. At the top of the map is Northern Boulevard, in 1909 called Bridge Street. Its wide center median, with malls and war memorials, is still there. St. George Church, at Main and Locust (39th Avenue) was built in 1853-1854 and is still downtown Main Street’s centerpiece — even though a tornado blew off its steeple in September 2010. In 1909, you see a large estate depicted on the map directly across Main Street from the church. That was the Bloodgood Mansion, later the Garretson House, constructed in the early 1800s and then replaced by office and taxpayer buildings in the early 20th Century."

[Selene]

Here is the Church...

"Though its steeple, which had dominated the Main Street-scape for 157 years, is now gone, I prefer to remember St. George Episcopal Church with the spire still intact. The church bell, cast in upstate Troy, NY, was undamaged in the 2010 tornado that carried the steeple across Main Street at 39th Avenue.

St. George’s sleeping parishioners, some deceased since the mid-1700s, remained undisturbed by the stormy weather."

"Main Street, looking north from the Long Island Rail Road in 1870. The steeple belongs to St. George Episcopal Church, which is still there; the steeple survived until 2010. The railroad was elevated in 1913."

Flushing was also a center of religious radicalism.

One of the oldest Quaker Meeting Houses is in North Flushing.

Now it is the second largest Asian community in NYC with Chinatown being numero uno...

Today the intersection of Main Street and Roosevelt Avenue is one of the busiest and most congested in NYC, and may be one of the busiest in the world as far as foot traffic, auto and bus traffic are concerned. The #7 Flushing Line has a terminal here, and the Long Island Rail Road stop beings yet more traffic here. Immigrants from China, Vietnam and Korea have beat a consistent path to Flushing for nearly thirty years, turning what was once a moderately busy crossroads into a supercharged commercial strip. Restaurants abound as do chain drugstores, fast food places, as well as groceries and butchers selling Asian specialties found only in certain enclaves. The Sheraton Hotel has built a branch catering to arrivees from nearby LaGuardia Airport.

There has been a corner clock at what was originally the Bank of Manhattan office building on the NE corner of Roosevelt and Main since its construction around 1930.

A fascinating look at the Main Street of 1969 between Roosevelt and 38th Avenues can be seen in this 8MM reel of film taken at the Flushing Thanksgiving Day parade. Not much of this Main Street is still there…

Ain't it purty with all them thar colors and so many peoples too...

A...

sorry about the video...

[Selene]

This is where I grew up, between that red center line - Horace Harding Blvd. and that park with the lake.

[Backlighting]

Some parks to get mischievous in as a kid, Adam?

Here's some more "sleeping parishioners"

Had an office a couple of blocks away during the late 70's.

The third and current Trinity Church was finished in 1846

Some notables below ground:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_Church_%28Manhattan%29

[dldelancey]

Hmm, maybe we can get the discussion back on topic?

Derek,

I have to agree with MSK that the city was built (no pun intended) on a bad premise. However, as you say, Ryan is well beyond that now. He does have options other than "kill the bitch" although that may be the most expedient and less costly one.

Assuming he retains ownership of the infrastructure, he could disable or dismantle it. (I only have surface familiarity with the game, so I don't know if that's the case.) He would essentially be going Galt... again.

I wonder if he could go Galt again. I would think that the construction costs would have completely drained his Federal Reserve notes (though the novel doesn't exactly say) and underwater he is indeed quite rich as he owns most of the structure and leases it out to everyone who lives there and all businesses that operate there but it is all done in the local currency-Ryan dollars.

MSK definitely stopped the momentum of the question. It reminds me of chess analysis. After a game the two players, and sometimes and side line viewers, will sit and go over the moves to see if there were better moves to have been made. Sometimes you get caught up checking and rechecking all possible variations to one particular position in the game, usually the turning point or the position that won the game. The winner shows that they had rock solid play, that no matter what the opponent did, they were held steady in the web, and then someone on the outside widens the perspective by looking at the move that came before that position! Suddenly the game is completely even, or even winning for the opponent.

Thats why I tried to introduce the second dilemma of the book, one that couldn't be jumped out of in the same manner

If he owns the infrastructure, then my underlying idea is still valid, no? He could stop leasing to the people who are turning out to be not such a good fit for the community. It's an economic embargo of sorts.

[Derek McGowan]

Hmm, maybe we can get the discussion back on topic?

Derek,

I have to agree with MSK that the city was built (no pun intended) on a bad premise. However, as you say, Ryan is well beyond that now. He does have options other than "kill the bitch" although that may be the most expedient and less costly one.

Assuming he retains ownership of the infrastructure, he could disable or dismantle it. (I only have surface familiarity with the game, so I don't know if that's the case.) He would essentially be going Galt... again.

I wonder if he could go Galt again. I would think that the construction costs would have completely drained his Federal Reserve notes (though the novel doesn't exactly say) and underwater he is indeed quite rich as he owns most of the structure and leases it out to everyone who lives there and all businesses that operate there but it is all done in the local currency-Ryan dollars.

MSK definitely stopped the momentum of the question. It reminds me of chess analysis. After a game the two players, and sometimes and side line viewers, will sit and go over the moves to see if there were better moves to have been made. Sometimes you get caught up checking and rechecking all possible variations to one particular position in the game, usually the turning point or the position that won the game. The winner shows that they had rock solid play, that no matter what the opponent did, they were held steady in the web, and then someone on the outside widens the perspective by looking at the move that came before that position! Suddenly the game is completely even, or even winning for the opponent.

Thats why I tried to introduce the second dilemma of the book, one that couldn't be jumped out of in the same manner

If he owns the infrastructure, then my underlying idea is still valid, no? He could stop leasing to the people who are turning out to be not such a good fit for the community. It's an economic embargo of sorts.

the problem is the people who are already in the city. He doesn't have to lease to them and they can indeed be homeless but they still can't leave the city so they can still propagate unwanted ideas.

Now if you are asking whether or not he could leave the city, just saying "to hell with you guys" he could, because he has one of the few personal submarines but then he would be turning his back on a dream and I think a dream of that scale would be hard to walk away from

[Brant Gaede]

"Going Galt" seems to ignore its origins as a surreal allegory.

There was a lot of would-be nation building in the 1970s of that ilk from libertarians' utopian thinking. An essential problem of Objectivism is its moral and political perfectionism. Rand emphasized the moral and avoided most of the political problems with a sleight of hand of some kind of "voluntary" taxation. Thus the parting of the waves of libertarians and Objectivists and the intellectual dead end of both as such.

--Brant

Rand was more practical than her novel though stuck to it

edit: "waves" should have been "ways"

Edited October 6, 2014 by Brant Gaede

[anthony]

Ha!: I'm seeing all those libertarians and O'ists escaping Pharaoh through the parting of the Red Sea (but I know what you mean, Brant).

I've never followed objections to the workability of voluntary taxation. One, it would be, over all, in a much wealthier society; Two, assuming the vast majority -and it would have to be, to come in to being - are rationally self-interested individuals who could not accept a free lunch, most would be only too happy to cough up what each deemed appropriate; and last, the cost of lean government compared to the bloated, interfering, redistributing, wasteful and corrupt kind, must come in 100's of times cheaper.

No Utopia, not even "perfect man", is needed or anticipated, thank god - and I believe it wasn't Rand's intent either .

[Wolf DeVoon]

Back to Derek's question. Bioshock is a sick first-person shooter game. Ryan's dilemma is phony.

It's impossible that undersea city of Rapture could have been built by one man, no matter how rich.

Project developers and tens of thousands of construction workers are dead.

[Derek McGowan]

Back to Derek's question. Bioshock is a sick first-person shooter game. Ryan's dilemma is phony.

It's impossible that undersea city of Rapture could have been built by one man, no matter how rich.

Project developers and tens of thousands of construction workers are dead.

Geez Wolf,

Sorry to have offended your sensibilities...

ps. yes, many died during construction of the underworld city

[Wolf DeVoon]

Geez Wolf,

Sorry to have offended your sensibilities...

ps. yes, many died during construction of the underworld city

Well, that wasn't the point. To build such a city would require decades, perhaps a century and the combined wealth of many founders and investors -- so it couldn't be kingpin Andrew Ryan who faced a dilemma, but some descendant or manager acting on behalf of shareholders, employees and pensioners. Among all the many thousands of people who contributed to and worked on building Rapture, it's impossible that they were all of one mind or uniformly in agreement about anything. So a dilemma of what to do with the first dissenter is unreal.

I'm offended by gory first-person shooter games. They breed mass murderers like Adam Lanza and James Holmes.

Bioshock is much worse than GTA.