Having made less than the most of my college years, I’ve been sporadically trying to compensate ever since. (Although the extent of any Remedial Philosophy consists of my current reading matter, the anthology ‘Family Guy’ and Philosophy: A Cure for the Petarded.) A recent clearance sale at a local Borders enabled me to make a smash-and-grab raid of titles like …
• Frommer’s Philadelphia Day by Day
• Raiders & Rebels: A History of the Golden Age of Piracy by Frank Sherry
• Nelson’s Trafalgar by Roy Adkins
• The Wreck of the Medusa by Jonathan Miles
• The Wars of the Roses by Alison Weir
• Halsey’s Typhoon by Bob Drury & Tom Clavin
• The Best and the Brightest by David Halberstam
• A Better War: Continue reading
Meanwhile, Hawaii legislators are seriously considering making the Aloha State 
The Venetian’s Falcon. The Kasper Gutman and Joel Cairo of Las Vegas politics, Sheldon Adelson and sidekick Victor Chaltiel really must have it in for Mayor Oscar Goodman. Perhaps it’s because Chaltiel and fellow candidate Carolyn Goodman (Mrs. Oscar) ran rival private schools. Who knows? But Chaltiel’s campaign — whose 
When Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad (R) was campaigning to reclaim his old office from Chet Culver (D), he argued against Culver’s casino-expansion plan, arguing that it was economically inadvisable. With the Iowa casino market not so much saturated as waterlogged, it was solid argument. But Candidate Branstad was a different animal than Chief Executive Branstad, who proposes to compound casinos’ difficulties with 
“Vegas hotel mogul Steve Wynn is one of the most prominent art collectors in the country, and the possessor of one of the costliest elbows in history.” — ArtInfo.com roving reporter Julia Halperin, having a bit of fun 
“… also points out an issue with any rail-based form of mass transportation — its enormous inflexibility, especially compared with bus-based options. As population centers and resort destinations change over time, rail-based transportation is unable to adapt to the change in demand for its services.
James Packer‘s had enough of the U.S. casino market. While not definitively ruling out a return to the American gaming industry, the minority owner of Cannery Casino Resorts makes it clear that he’s neither the stomach nor the lucre for pursuing further stateside ventures. At least, not in the foreseeable future. Ironically, had Packer waited until casino stocks and bonds were in the toilet, and debt was being sold at huge markdowns, he could have positioned himself to be a major player in this country. Instead, he blew chunks of the fortune father Kerry Packer left him on an incoherent investment strategy. It saw Crown Ltd. purchasing bits and pieces of Harrah’s Entertainment, Station Casinos and Cannery when all were at sky-high value.
“For example, it has been alleged, and in one case confirmed by Righthaven’s counsel, that it brought at least two separate cases before this court against the wrong party. Using assembly-line litigation methods coupled with inadequate jurisdictional and factual due diligence and achieving profit-generating settlements from the disadvantaged appear to be its key motivation.” — 
Gov. Rick Scott‘s big — and rather sudden — push to bring (more) private-sector casinos to Florida has run into a road block. The governor’s Tea Party base, of all people, is throwing up opposition … and not for the reason you might think. Its objections stem not from religious conservatism but the fiscal variety, contending that 
Oh man, 
What’s in a mile? A lot more than you might think, especially if you’re a Maine legislator. Confronted with a pesky requirement that gambling venues in the Pine Tree State must have 100-mile exclusivity zones, some would redefine a “mile” as 1.25 miles. That is to say, they’d circumvent state law by creatively reinterpreting “mile” ex post facto to mean “road mile.” So henceforth and for the purposes of job creation a mile is a mile … except when it isn’t.
After a long CEO search that threatened never to end, Shufflemaster has found its man. And it’s not just anybody rather, but Gavin Isaacs … most recently the president COO of Bally Technologies since 2006, during which time he helped turn that company around. Prior to Bally, Isaacs (left) ran the U.S. branch of Aristocrat Technologies before quitting after a clash with Aristocrat Leisure CEO Paul Oneile. The latter’s tenure 
“[W]e’re not selling a shoe or a bottle of water. We’re selling an experience,” says Isle of Capri Casinos Vice President of Brand Marketing — and friend of S&G — Julia Carcamo (left). Those words should be engraved on certain bean-counting casino bosses’ foreheads. Isle is certainly an example of a company that had to rather painfully reinvent itself, particularly with regard to the perception that it gone from industry leader to laggard, derisively known as “Pile of Debris.”
Through the looking glass. Also doing some reinvention is former Harrah’s Entertainment veep Marilyn Winn. After switching teams to Wynn Resorts, she became Marilyn Winn-Spiegel and now Marilyn Spiegel, the better to put any association with “the H word” behind her, I suppose. That’s more reinvention than she ever did with the various Strip properties under her aegis since the catastrophic LBO went through. (I hear the words “Marilyn Winn” and have visions of peeling paint.) Coming from the cheeseparing regime at One 
“The employees I talked to last night (interestingly enough) didn’t have it in for [Sahara owner Sam] Nazarian. They had truckloads of blame for the management [Navegante Group] he put into place. One said ‘He spends $400 million on this place, then the management he puts in (rolling eyes with displeasure)…’.” — AccessVegas.com, in a comment thread following a recent Steve Friess 
Failed gaming mogul Donald Trump appears to be running his presidential quasi-campaign with the same business acumen that made his casino empire what it is today. The incident is more funny than anything else because Trump’s wouldn’t-fool-an-infant scheme is lifted from an ancient plotline on Dallas wherein J.R. Ewing used lawyer Alan Beam to front a sham “Draft Cliff Barnes for Congress” campaign, the better to pull the rug out from under Barnes (never a difficult task) later on. Once again, history repeats itself — first as prime-time drama, then as farce, although comparing The Donald to J.R. Ewing is inordinately flattering to Trump.