Smile! You're the Candid Camera!

Now you can hear with your teeth.  If you need to.   

It’s not for everyone, of course.  But entrepreneurs in medical science have devised a gadget for those who are deaf in only one ear, or “single-side deaf.”    

Aptly named the “SoundBite,” it’s comprised of two transmitters; the one you wear in your deaf ear picks up sound signals on that side and sends them to pre-wired molars on the other side.  Then the molars use the second transmitter to forward the sound signals through the bones in your skull to your hearing ear.  Weird, but miraculous.   

And it gives an entirely new meaning to ‘Radiohead.’ 

I’m a little hung up on how it works if someone knocks on the door on your left and you hear it from the window on your right.  Or what if there’s signal interference from, say, SETI?   

But hey, my grandma’s knee predicted the weather.  I always knew when to bundle up, so who am I to argue?    

I’m not surprised at this latest invention.  After all, it wasn’t that long ago when we saw pictures of lab rats with ears growing out of their backs.  No, not rat ears.  Human ears.  Lab techs cultivated ears for future use in little peripatetic plantations, like rootless, itinerant Christmas tree farms.  Ewww.  

But it’s all for the good.  Burn victims and anyone doing a few rounds with Mike Tyson could benefit. 

It was only a matter of time before other body parts were re-purposed in today’s “green” climate. 

We have more teeth than we need anyway, so why not rethink the whole mastication thing?  Shift it all to the front, rodent style, and set aside a few back teeth and those canines for a quiet day, if you get my meaning.  The Tooth Fairy will have to reinvent himself, but the world’s changing, man.  Adapt or die.   

Horticultural grafts have had us harvesting peaches from apple trees for decades.  The internet is rife with videos of momma dogs raising baby squirrels.  It’s no wonder we accept these kinds of “cross pollination” as routine.   

But carry it to its logical extreme and next thing you know we’ve got Sodom and Gonorrhea.  No, wait…I didn’t mean that.  Spell check is messing with me.  I meant that Biblical thing.  You know - the foundation of Las Vegas?  Sloth and Greed!?  No – Sparkle and Flash!?  Oh forget it. 

I’m ambivalent, that’s all.  

OK look, at my age, I’m all for it, this new-fangled angle on body parts.  Repurpose a tooth?  Sign me up!  Reuse bone marrow?  I’m there.  Refurbish the ragged, the weary, the long-in-the-tooth?  Oh yeah, count me in.   

I’ll tell you what I’d like to see recycled.  Robert Redford.  Like American Pickers with an eye for treasures heaped up in a hoarder’s back bedroom, new age scavengers could pick him up for a song.  Take him back to the shop; sand him down with #3 grit; rub in a honey glaze and finish him off with a coat of satin sealant.  Hollywood could still get a lot of use out of him.  But no!  We’re all too ready to cast off the classics.  

Instead, we have Wayne Newton.  A cautionary tale of misguided science and misspent technology.   

You can see why I’m torn. 

Just watch.  Now that Brad Pitt and Johnny Depp have crossed the threshold from fresh and plump on their way to shriveled and mossy, like so many Marlon Brando’s, they’ll wind up on a Tinsel Town junk pile when they could be aged like a single malt scotch.   

I’m not a Luddite, really.  I love the gadgets and apps.  I’m young.  I’m hip, or hep, or sick or cool.  Whatever.  Heck, I’ll go bionic when the time comes.  Or piecemeal me.  I’m good with it. 

In fact, in the spirit of progress, I offer these visionary suggestions for advances on the dental front.  Why not put our network where our mouth is?  We could link our teeth to Facebook and chatter away.  We can update our status while whitening.  

And why stop there?  Mount MP3 players, digital cameras, Angry Birds apps and home monitoring systems all around the grille. 

We’ll call it a Swiss Army mouth.  Say cheese!

Birthday Wishes for Dr. Frankenstein

In our ongoing efforts to keep you apprised of significant events that might otherwise elude your attention, we alert you to the 100^th celebration of the birth of Dr. Alan Turing, known in esoteric circles as the Father of Artificial Intelligence. 

A brilliant code cracker in World War II, Turing later addressed the problem of artificial intelligence.  As you well know if you’ve ever cursed your bank’s voicemail system or defied your GPS, artificial intelligence (AI), defined as the “intelligence of machines,” can be problematic.  

The problem with AI is that it’s stupid.   

But I’m getting ahead of myself.   

Of course, computers appear clever.  They can reason, deduce, problem solve, plan, learn, process natural language, perceive their environment, move and manipulate it, practice social interaction, even create.  But then so can an army of ants; and they have just as much personality. 

OK, ants can’t process natural language.  If only they could!  Instead of laying down a barrier of Agent Orange in the kitchen, we’d issue verbal threats to keep them out of the pantry.  “Be gone insects!” 

My first boyfriend was artificially intelligent.  At least that’s what my mom thought.  He was a twin and we often double-dated with his brother.  Since I lived closer than his brother’s girlfriend, they would pick me up first, and oddly, they’d both come to the door.   

When my mom saw them bounding up the sidewalk she’d announce their arrival by saying, “Here comes the wit.”  Took me a long time to get it. 

Dr. Turing proposed an experiment which became known as…wait for it…the Turing Test.  An attempt to define the standard for a machine to be called "intelligent," the Turing test declares that a computer can "think" when, through written conversation, a human interrogator cannot tell it apart from a human being.  Can a computer fool a person into thinking it’s a person too?  

So the Turing test boils down to texting.  And so far, the computer always loses apparently because it persists in distinguishing between ‘your’ and ‘you’re,’ a feat humans cannot master.  Incongruously, these results explain less about a computer’s ability to think than about human behavior, for instance all those robotic young people stalled in mid-step, staring at their Smartphones, zombie-like, their thumbs jumping around the screens mechanically.  

Yes, AI is unsettling all on its own.  But just stir in a dose of science fiction and it becomes sinister.  Visionary writers capitalize on our innate fears and distrust with some ridiculously scary scenarios that don’t seem that far from feasible.  In sci-fi horror flicks, machines don’t just want to be human; they succeed, at least by Turing’s test.  We’re fooled, we’re lulled, and then we’re in trouble.  Think Hal.  No!  Think Ash, the Science Officer onboard the commercial spaceship Nostromo.  His dispassionate machine self, housed in a human-seeming body chats up Sigourney Weaver and then allows the Alien through the airlock!    

Not to pass up a lucrative opportunity, I myself am working on a screenplay scarier still for its Spielbergian normalcy - think Pinocchio all grown up.  Sure, he’s a sweet little puppet.  He only wants to be a “real boy.”  What harm could there possibly be?  But next thing you know he moves back home, sleeps on the couch and eats all guacamole.  

Turing suggested that rather than building a program that simulates an adult mind, it would be better to simulate a child's mind and then subject it to a course of education.  Good luck with that.  Considering the mandates of No Child Left Behind coupled with abysmal educational funding, we can only expect a class of oversized automatons playing computer games all day and speaking in code.  LOL.  OMG!  Wait!  Stop! 

There you have it.  The trouble isn’t with the machines; it’s with us humans.  We always go too far.  We’re not satisfied with a robot that bumps around pretending to vacuum the floors.  No, we’ve got to have a perfect thing that will solve all our dysfunction.  An impeccable man.  A faultless woman.  Everyone else doing just what we want, cheerfully.  Next we’re shopping for our ideal mate in the eHarmony boutique at the Outer Limits Mall. 

Lovely concept.  Faulty execution every time. 

Happy Birthday to you, Dr. Turing.        

The Universe Explained, and You're Welcome

So Anderson Cooper is gay.  Republicans want to repeal the newly validated healthcare law.  The Olympics are imminent.  And oh yeah, they found a God particle. 

A ‘God particle’!?  What’s a God particle, for Heaven’s sake?  Why it’s the long-sought-after Higgs boson.  Oh, of course!  The Higgs boson!  Why didn’t you just say so? 

For the layman, and other ignorant schmos like me, the Higgs boson, dubbed the "God particle," is a key piece in the scientific puzzle that seeks to explain the origin of the universe.  Duh! 

The Higgs boson appeared 13.7 billion years ago in the chaos of the Big Bang and turned the flying debris into galaxies, stars and planets.  Or so the theory goes. 

Physicists around the globe have spent decades with little wrinkles in their foreheads - not to mention billions of dollars in their hunt for an actual God particle - a tiny thingy that makes universes out of flying flotsam.  And now, scientists working at the world's largest atom smasher say they have proof of the existence of just such a, uh, thingy. 

Before you file this in the Who Cares Category, consider the implications:  According to a broad scientific consensus, the formal discovery of the God particle constitutes the greatest advance in knowledge of the universe since E=MCx2 (I can’t get my computer to make that little superscript 2 signifying ‘squared,’ but surely you’re familiar.)   

Proof of the Higgs boson is being hailed as a key to confirming the standard model of physics that explains what gives mass to matter and, by extension, how the universe was formed.  Thank God and his particle. 

Unable to resist the urge to clarify a concept that mainstream media has ranked alongside new apps offering GPS for hikers, Rutgers University physicist Matt Strassler told Reuters that without the God particle, "nothing like human beings, or the earth we live on, could exist."  

But… the fact that we do exist here on the planet sort of proves we could be here, to me at least.  But then I’ve always been easy to please.  For scientists, the particle’s existence has been only hypothetical, in spite of the fact that they themselves were standing around in laboratories, wearing white coats with pocket protectors that couldn’t exist without the flippin’ thing in the first place.   

We’re orbiting a conundrum.  It’s a cosmic chicken and egg.  And I thought working in public schools was maddening. 

In an interview with National Public Radio, physicist Joseph Lykken of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory near Chicago explained the difficulty in tracking down the particle.  "It exists for a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a second, or something like that, and then falls apart into other particles."   

Oh I see.  Like the attention span of a Labrador retriever.  Got it.  Thank you.  

I’m not going to be the one to break it to all these eggheads, but there is another question on the edge of its seat, waiting for the confetti to hit the ground.  If you’ve just popped your champagne’s cork, you might want to avert your eyes. 

Where’d the God particle come from? 

It seems obvious to me, but as mentioned above, I’m on a simpler plane than these guys.  On the other hand, maybe I’m more of like mind with Albert Einstein than my husband would ever admit.  In describing his ‘cosmic religion,’ Einstein spoke of a "miraculous order which manifests itself in all of nature as well as in the world of ideas."  

Yeah, go on.  Preach to me Albert. 

"…I have nothing but awe when I observe the laws of nature,” he said.  “God is a mystery.  But a comprehensible mystery.  There are not laws without a lawgiver.” 

That’s what I’m talkin’ about!  Who better to create Mr. Higgs’s boson?  Or maybe what better?  I’ll grant the lab geeks that much. 

But Albert is more quotable than I am.  He maintained that "even though…religion and science… are clearly marked off from each other" there are "strong reciprocal relationships and dependencies, as aspirations for truth derive from the religious sphere."   

For Einstein, "Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind." 

Go Albert!  You rock.

Power Napping for Self-Improvement

I’m not asking for a thump on the head.   

But some guys have all the luck, don’t they?   

Maybe you saw that guy on CBS Sunday Morning who took a knock to the noggin and woke up with a talent for playing the piano.  And he can really play - not just “Heart and Soul,” either.   

He woke up from a mild concussion, felt the urge, sat down, composed and played like a son-of-a-gun.  He says now he sees the notes, not just on the page, but also in the air.  That’s a big payoff for a small smack.  Hooray for him. 

But it’s irritating to those of us who deal with the simultaneous impediments of trying to learn to play the piano past the point when our synapses have ossified, coupled with an aversion to taking a hit.  

My husband offered to help me out with this, but I think he was making fun.  Something in his eyes.  Too eager.  He salivated.  I can only hope he’s not planning an “accident” to do me a favor! 

Here’s the dilemma:  I want to play, but all that study and practice – whew!  I just don’t know if I have it in me. 

It’s like that quote I saw online the other day:  “I’ll do anything to lose weight – except diet and exercise.”  

Then there’s that other guy on the Science Channel who had a stroke and came back an artist.  

Since coming home from the hospital, this guy has painted every surface available to him.  Literally.  He’s on his fifth layer.  And he’s not using antique white.  He maps out poster-sized sections of walls, ceilings, floors, furniture and countertops, and creates.  His living room looks like a mob of muralists threw up on it.   

The mystic in me can’t help wondering if he ever wished he could just paint all the time instead of being a day trader or whatever his regular job was.  Rod Serling warned us about that sort of thing. 

Doctors speculate that his stroke created an imbalance between the excitation processors and inhibition suppressors in his brain.  Painter excitation is winning and this poor schmuck can’t stop himself from artistic expression.  I don’t think I want to go that far.  

Of course no one in her right mind would go to that length, even for her art.  But a slothful person does look for miracles. 

That’s why I read with interest the new research saying that imagining practicing the piano, or shooting baskets, or “virtually rehearsing” just about anything produces improvements in that skill approximating those accrued from actual practice.  Really.  If only that could apply to housework.  Cause I can visualize a clean house and it’s nice.  Smells good, shines and everything.  But I don’t like to visualize the actual cleaning.  That must be why we’re all caked over. 

To get the full benefit of your imagination, you have to visualize the activity for the same amount of time you would put in to doing it.  What’s the good in that?  If a person has to visualize practicing her scales in order to procrastinate practicing her scales, well, that little chore just lost its appeal.  That’s like the commuter stuck in traffic who takes a 20-minute detour to avoid a five-minute delay. 

On the other hand, innovative dream researchers have now demonstrated that reflection on a task while asleep and dreaming produces the same brain waves as actually completing the task.  So, if we dream of playing onstage at Carnegie Hall, it boosts our ability to play there one day.  This is the ultimate in multi-tasking.  Lucid dreamers hone their talents while catching their z’s.   

One can extrapolate that gainful achievements await the daydreamer, the blank stare-er, and the while-er away of time.  At last!  A regimen that plays to my in borne aptitudes.  I’m feeling excited about my potential accomplishments! 

I could start the day by picturing some time on the treadmill.  My chair at the computer is comfortable enough to accommodate reverie on the memoir I’m writing.  Next I’ll nap next to the piano.  Laundry?  A mental rehearsal!  Soon, it’ll be time to envision dinner.   

I’m liking this.  It fits my lifestyle.  It’s the next generation of armchair quarterback:  naptime artiste.

Iron Mike Tyson on Broadway

“This is…what [I] decided to do after I gave up using drugs and being a pig and stuff…”  

That’s Mike Tyson speaking to Ann Curry on the “Today Show” about his upcoming collaboration with Spike Lee.  He’s going to do a one-man show on Broadway.  That’s right.  Limited engagement.  Six nights only with a metaphorically naked Tyson.   

It’s the new Mike.  The improved Mike.  You have to love a guy who gives up being a pig.  Not to mention drugs and stuff.  Don’t you? 

While we all have room to grow, Iron Mike’s margin for improvement dwarfs that of the average schmo.  God love him for embarking upon a plan of self-improvement. It must be staggering.  He didn’t break it down into short-term, long-term, personal or professional goals.  “Today” only has a two-hour timeslot.  But apparently it’s a general overhaul.   

I’d love to see his notes on the brainstorm.  “Let’s see,” he must have said to himself, licking the tip of his pencil, “where to start?”  The “stuff” category offers the greatest range of opportunity.  No more wet towels on the furniture, for sure. 

Mike says he’s a vegan now.  He won’t eat anything with a face.  Birds, fish, insects and mammals across the globe exhaled in relief at the news.  Too late for Evander Holyfield, of course, but it’s a step on the personal growth highway. 

One wonders, after such a prolonged period of porcine existence, what triggered the change?  Did Mr. Tyson have an epiphany?  Was there a crystalizing experience?  A flash of insight or inspiration?  Well, yes.  There was such an event for Mike.  During his interview with our cultured and genteel Ms. Curry, Tyson revealed the moment he realized he wanted to live a cleaner, healthier lifestyle: 

"I just threw up the white flag," he said.  "There was too many prison cells, too many jails, too many lawsuits, too many bankruptcies, too many women, too many venereal diseases, too many everything.”  

OK, stop.  We get it.  Ann has leaned away on her stool, clutching her notepad.  No need to go into greater detail, is there?  But it seems there was a need.  Tyson pressed on, “I got tired.  I really got tired of, you know, like every time a prostitute –- I would head back from a trip -- I had to sleep with her.  So I just said, 'I'm going to live a different life.'” 

Not unlike others who’ve turned themselves around, right?  (I’m searching for a comparable example here.  Anyone?  Anyone?  Anyone who overcame those odds, that background, that ingrained behavior?)  

But my mom used to tell me, the time to make up your mind about people is never. 

Is it too late for Mike Tyson?  Can he redeem himself after decades of decadence?  Were there too many prisons and prostitutes for us?  Does his prison time, paying his debt, satisfy our need for justice after such heinous crimes?  Does bankruptcy on the grandest scale, losing $350million, truly wipe the books clean? 

Are we willing to let him start again?  Could he ever become a kinder, gentler Mike Tyson?  More than that, can he become a successful song and dance man? 

If you saw him in “The Hangover II” you already know he can’t sing, and dancing in the ring does not equate.  But there was that one thing - he seemed willing to laugh at himself.  I don’t think the old Mike would have done that. 

As for Tyson’s Broadway debut, which will feature Iron Mike offering a personal look into the highs and lows of his career, including his addiction to drugs, alcohol and women, Spike Lee says, “What Mike’s going to do is [display] the same courage he displayed in the ring.  I think [it takes] just as much courage to go on stage [and] bare your soul to the audience.”  

If you’ve been a pig the first step in recovery is taking responsibility for the sty. 

“I have to be careful,” said Tyson, “because I can’t stay on some subjects for a long time.  I can’t stay … for a long time because I might cry, something might happen,”  

What will happen, if he pulls it off, will be an object lesson in redemption. 

Here's Why Rats Pack

It’s hard to explain my Fluffy.  I see her every day.  She looks down from her perch above the racks in my closet, googley eyes frozen into a dazed stare. 

I have a picture of myself at 5 years old, sitting on the front porch of my parents’ starter house in Tulsa, grinning, proud, holding Fluffy by her felt ears.   

What causes a person to save such a thing as this raggedy stuffed cat?   

Had to replace her eyes some years ago.  Actually, that was the second time I replaced them.  My first effort consisted of carpet tacks pushed into Fluffy’s face where her original eyes sat.  One had fallen out and disappeared.  To my little girl way of thinking, at least she could see again, even if the tacks had no pupils and rusted in their sockets.   

More recently, I found myself in a bead store running my fingers through a bin of green eyes on stems.  They’re like Lasik for Fluffy.  A miracle. 

Why I bothered…unsure.   

I still take her down on occasion and commune with her.  Turns out she’s not a plush toy at all.  Not like the teddy bears and Elmo’s of today.  My Fluffy appears to be made from a complete rabbit pelt.  Well, almost complete.  No true legs or telltale rabbit’s feet.  She doesn’t stand, but rather lies on her belly with nubby legs splayed.  Just visualize a rabbit skin spread out like a bear rug.  Toymakers took that, wrapped it around stuffing, stitched it closed and voila!  Fluffy, a little girl’s kitty. 

She’s got rabbit fur and leather hide and she’s packed with straw – I found this out long ago when her tail came off, gone the way of her original eye. 

They attached felt kitty ears since keeping the rabbit’s ears would have been impractical.  No doubt over time they would have stiffened and cracked.  Not to mention the fact that rabbit ears would have made a bunny, not a kitty.  Though admittedly, I still could have called her Fluffy. 

Last week I made the mistake of introducing Fluffy to my macho year-old Burmese cat, Jesse, king of the Plath jungle.  He seemed quite stunned that I’d kept another feline (except Uma, his mate) in the house without his knowledge.  With cat-like reflexes (sorry) he lashed out at Fluffy and hooked her with his claw.  After a brief skirmish during which his pupils enlarged and his focus never wavered, I rescued her, smoothed her remaining fur and returned her to her shelf, high in the closet.   

But now Jesse knows she’s there and he continues to stare upward, plotting, humorless.  My task is to divert him and hope he forgets.  Have you ever known a cat to forget where he saw a mouse?  Me neither. 

I could pack her away.  But, but… 

I think my parents gave me Fluffy to distract me during our upcoming trek across the globe.  My dad took a job in Iran when I was five and we were packing for a series of long flights to get there.  No jets, we crossed the Atlantic in a four-engine propeller driven TWA airliner.  My brother and Fluffy and I slept under the air conditioning vent in a fold-down cot where overhead luggage is stored today.  Tulsa to New York to London then Paris.  Damascus to Beirut to Abadan.  Then two years in the desert - a lot to take in for a little girl and her Fluffy. 

Oh, I’ve read the advice from those meddling do-gooders, the terminally tidy who click their tongues when they see Tupperware tubs filled with photos-to-be-sorted and drawers devoted to handwritten letters of uneven sizes.  They know just what to do with refrigerator magnets and knick-knacks and do-dads and childhood toys still living at home.  

Decades of nostalgia could be uploaded, categorized, and stored, untouchable, in the cloud.  Even mementos can be photographed for efficiency and donated or dispensed with, leaving desktops and chests of drawers clean and serene. 

If they had their way, my house would be streamlined, orderly, positively Scandinavian. I’m not sure I’d be at home in that place.   

And what would life be without Fluffy?

Lemons & Cherries on Facebook

I read that in the not-too-distant future, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook will merge to form one giant, idiotic, super-sized, time-wasting, non-productive, mind-numbing, do-not-need-to-know website called YouTwitFace. 

I read it on Facebook.   

There’s no denying, so much of the stuff that shows up on Facebook is inane:  “‘Share’ if you love your kids more than anything.  It’s a shame how few people will take this simple step to show their love for their family.”   

So, you mean if I don’t ‘share,’ I don’t love my kids?  Uh oh.  On penalty of not proving my love for the requisite thing, God, country, or bar-b-qued beef, I decline to repost pretty much anything that tells me to repost it.  Just on principle.  Or obstinate defiance.  Quit telling me what to do.  Share this if you agree. 

Too many posts manage to shrink the trivial from microscopic to subatomic:  Sandy changed her profile pic! – Hello Kitty!  Or:  Sherry “likes” Target.  Or:  Boating - 1,948,515 people like this.  Be the first of your friends! 

So many people post pictures of their food!  Who knew that lunch with Dad would warrant the effort?  And so misguided!  The pic includes salads, sides, and entrees, but no likeness of the man who raised the photographer and most likely bought him the camera.   

Then there’s the unbearable cuteness of dancing doggies, piles of kittens, ducks rescued from drainage pipes, and deer touching noses with goats.  Oh my.  But full disclosure is in order:  I look forward to a video posted daily from Wimp.com.  This morning I frittered away 1 minute 29 seconds on “A pig and his oatmeal.”  So worth it. 

And I confess; I smile at the pics of people with their pets.  All that unabashed love and foolishness.  Count me in.  Grandbabies?  Oh yeah.  I grin and coo at the screen every day, time after time, with each new wobble or burp.   

Here’s how I see it:  I’m experiencing joy that would be out of my consciousness had little Markie Zuckerberg chosen to compose music instead of computer code.  A rationalization, you say?  So be it. 

When I was a classroom teacher 100 years ago, (1990), I traveled to the (then) Soviet Union with a couple of other teachers and 25 high school students.  What a great experience.  I’ll tell you about it sometime.   

One of the best things about the trip was our courier, Tatyana, a teacher from Grodno.  She spent three weeks shepherding us through that conglomerate of contradictions.  She knew everything, translated everything.  Because of her, everything was possible.  

You form a bond after 21 days of total dependence. 

After that trip, Tatyana and I wrote back and forth the hard way.  I just couldn’t bring myself to use Microsoft Word when she didn’t even have a computer!  Ten years or more of beautiful, enlightening, tedious, handwritten letters.  Then alas, we fell out of touch. 

But lo and behold, thanks to Mikhail Gorbachev and Mark Z., Tatyana found me last week – you guessed it – on Facebook.  Say what you will about hoodies and IPO’s, you’ve gotta admit that’s pretty cool. 

A young woman whose family moved back to Cairo before she graduated from the high school where I was principal friended me on Facebook.  (Isn’t it great that “friend” became a verb?)  Through her postings, I had the privilege of witnessing the Egyptian revolution from her personal, life-altering point of view.   

She’s now a university student there majoring in political science and journalism.  Most recently, she posted pictures showing her interview of former President Jimmy Carter.  That’s my girl!   

Another alum posted video of himself rehearsing with John Legend for an upcoming episode of “Duets.”  You’re not going to get that on Gmail.   

So instead of slamming Facebook in its entirety, I embrace it like a weekend in Las Vegas.  It’s the nickel slot machine of my online gambling experience.  Mostly my deposits earn mismatched cryptograms and lemons.  They tax my time, threaten my dignity, and even chip at my self-respect.  If my husband walks into the room, I must have my justifications ready for time ill spent.   

But just often enough, it comes up with a few cherries and the jingle of a payout.  So I keep going back.