91. Online Acquaintances

I really am getting old.  I used to have exciting and occasionally, quite racy dreams.  Last night I had a complicated dream about cooking beetroot.

Another possible sign of ageing is that whereas in the past I would play football, rugby and cricket, my pastimes now are conducted from a comfy chair.  I am a sedentary hobbyist. 

Sometimes I play poker, online.  I don’t play for real money.  People do play online for real money but I never play poker for real.  The game I play is just for fun. 

When I started nearly four years ago I was “given” $1500 of stake money to get me going.  The first time I played I lost it all in about 30 minutes and I had to wait 24 hours until my pot was topped up again with another $1500. 

Whatever you may think, there is a lot of skill in playing poker and the more I played, the better I became and the more pretend money I won.  Today I have slightly more than $16 million in my account!

When I was young I did occasionally play poker for real money but real poker is nothing like ‘play poker’.  No one, playing with their own money, would ever go “all in” to try and fill an inside straight.  The odds against getting a 6 if you are holding 3, 4, 5, 7 are roughly 12:1 but in ‘play poker’ people often try to fill a straight and obviously they usually fail.

When someone does fluke an outrageous win in this way, some of the other players, who have certainly never played poker for real, will use the on-screen messaging facility to say “well done” or “well played”.  That’s why I have won 16 million dollars.  You don’t meet players like that when the money is real.

My poker name is Inge (my nickname at school) and my accompanying photo is the same one I use on Facebook:

Whatever you may think or imagine, that is not a photograph of me but he does have a certain charm, doesn’t he?

My fellow poker players are often intrigued by it and often make remarks and ask questions. 

“Is that a picture of you, Inge?” is the usual comment.

“Yes, on my wedding day,” is my standard response.

Today, Jim290 asked me if I am an alien.  I wrote that I was and that prompted Jim290 to write again. 

After about ten minutes, Suzybabe (who probably bears as much resemblance to her rather glamorous photo as I do to mine) joined in.  This is our exchange:

Jim290	Inge	Suzybabe
I saw a spaceship last year.
	No, you didn’t.
You weren’t there.
	Didn’t have to be.  You didn’t see a space ship.
YES, I DID.
	NO, YOU DIDN”T You didn’t see a space ship.
How you know?
	They’ve never been proved or verified.
What about Roswell? *
	That was a weather balloon.
You are WRONG!
	Where did you see the spaceship?
Middleton.
	Where’s that?
Near Caldwell.
	Where's Caldwell?  Are you American?
Idaho,  Yes.
	Thought so.  That explains it.
		Where are you from Inge?
	UK.
		Is that part of Russia?
	No.
		Did it used to be?
	No.  That was Ukraine.
Where’s UK?
	United Kingdom.
Where’s that?
	England?
It was light green hovered for 10 minutes.  Then it just disappeared.
	The balloon burst Was it at sunset?
Yes.
	Light from low sun through the balloon.
		I believe Jim.  There are lots over the US.
	You’re all gullible.
		They don’t come to England.  There’s nothing there.
	Really?
		Yes
It was like covered in a film.
	ET?
What ET mean?
	Extra Terrestrial.  A film (movie)
Is that a joke?

* Roswell  -  The Roswell UFO incident took place in the US, when an object crashed on a ranch near Roswell, New Mexico on July 7, 1947.

Some people have said and continue to maintain that it was a spacecraft bearing extra terrestrial beings.

Immediately after asking if I was making a joke, Jim290’s three of a kind was beaten by a straight.  He lost all his money and disappeared from the table and so he never got to find out that it was, indeed, meant to be a joke.

You probably already realised that was an attempt at a joke because you are probably not American but it shows that you do come across some strange and interesting people playing poker online.

90. Indubitably!

Do you like apples? I do.

I also like idioms and think that they can be fascinating.  An idiom is a combination of words that, because of its common usage, has a figurative meaning that is different from what you would think from the individual words that are used. 

Apparently, they exist in all languages. It has been calculated that there are at least 25000 in the English language and this number grows every year.

The English language has many idioms that originated in our agricultural heritage. They are common and in everyday use:

sorting the wheat from the chaff

until the cows come home

fell upon stony ground

plough a lonely furrow

A study of the language of a civilisation discovered by western anthropologists some 50 years ago in New Guinea proves that they are true hunter-gatherers and practise no form of farming whatsoever.  Although their language contains idioms, there are none that derive from any kind of farming, either arable or keeping livestock.  

Last week, while I was having breakfast, I heard someone on the radio say, 

“… as sure as eggs is eggs”. 

That got me thinking.  It’s a commonly used expression to convey certainty about something but why isn’t the grammatically correct, “as sure as eggs ARE eggs” ever used and does it come from some aspect of the practice of keeping chickens?

Thanks to Google, I found out why very quickly.  You may be aware that in May 2010, in Hesperody, I told of my intention to use the Internet to become an expert on a different subject every day before lunch and ever since I have been doing just that. 

Go on - test me.  Ask me whether there are more seats in the Bundestag than there are in the House of Commons or why do fools fall in love or what was George Harrison's sister's name or who let the dogs out?  I know all that now and a lot more too.   

Then, that evening on Newsnight, I heard a cabinet minister say very emphatically, “As sure as hell, that won’t happen.”

What?  Have I missed something?  When did Hell become a certainty?  I’m going to have to re-evaluate my whole life and then make many necessary adjustments.  If a leading member of the Conservative party is certain of it, then it must be true and hell must be real. 

Could he have been in touch with Margaret Thatcher?

He would, I think, have been on much more solid ground saying, “as sure as eggs is eggs,” because even although it is grammatically incorrect, there is a tangential element of truth in that phrase.

After only 10 seconds research I found that “As sure as eggs is eggs” is a corruption of the original,

“As sure as x is x”.  

That has an algebraic, mathematical certainty to it.  

There is no question about it that once x is assigned a value, xis always the same as x and therefore x is x.  In fact, it’s so true that you could say that it’s as certain as eggs is eggs. 

Now, how do you like them apples?

Half an hour after I posted this I got an email from the Professor Willy Aspinall BSc, PhD, CSci, CGeol, the Cabot Professor in Natural Hazards and Risk Science at Bristol University.  Willy was taught 'A' level physics by my father.

He writes:

Pedantically and in memory of your late father who, were he still with us, would surely aver that, almost invariably, x denotes a random variable which can take on any of a number of values.  If the value is fixed and known, algebraic notation is not needed.

So "eggs" may not be x.

I shall offer no counter to that.  I expect he's right.