The Relative Permeation of Vice in Cultures

This morning, out on the playset, Ian mentioned to me that the U.S. was the worst country in the world, in terms of smoking.  I don't believe that, and I told him so, and speculated that perhaps China or Greece might win that particular prize.  I went on to mention how dramatically vice in general has declined in the U.S. since my own childhood, and told the children that when I was a boy, when we went to our grandmother's house, you'd see aunts and uncles (and a parent) smoking, drinking beer, and playing card for money.  The children were confused by the association of playing-cards with money - which I take as an encouraging sign - but I explained that it's a form of gambling.  Then commenced the sermon, where I mentioned that people have to be very... unthinking... to gamble, because gambling intrinsically relies on most people losing money.

At this point, Attorney McDershowitz, as I call Ian sometimes, came through with an observation that never would have occurred to me:  he asserted that playing dreidl is a form of gambling.  I didn't know what to do with this proposition...

But after some reflection, I mentioned that there's a significant difference between dreidl and gambling - beyond that ever-so-superficial distinction of real money and chocolate money - namely that when you play dreidl, you can only lose "money" that was issued to you in the course of the game, whereas when you gamble, if you lose anything, you always lose money that you possessed prior to beginning the activity.

But the attorney objected:  in dreidl, you do, in fact, lose money that you had before you played.  I'm assuming here that you lose the "money" that was given to you at the outset of the game, as fodder for the sport itself, but I didn't get into that degree of hair-splitting; there's no point to it when you're dealing with such a savvy litigator...

(September 1, 2012)