LAST week I went to the dogs—literally. While the spectacle provided by
greyhounds running round and round in circles was evidently sufficient to fill a
stadium, my eyes were firmly on the humans. The dogs are only really there to
act as a less random version of the lottery balls, a device for generating
uncertainty so that gambling can take place.
The evidence for a particular species of human irrationality was hard to
ignore. For example, during each race, people were yelling: “Come on, number
four!”, or “Two! two! Go number two!” But how on earth could that help? Did each…
