Monte Carlo Quotes

His eldest sister (who modestly prefers to be identified here as a Tuckahoe homemaker) has asked me to describe him as looking like 'the blue-eyed Jewish-Irish Mohican scout who died in your arms at the roulette table at Monte Carlo.

When his phone rang, he had to dig through his pocket to find it, and his fingers brushed against a pair of tiny earbuds he and Kat had last used in Monte Carlo. Hale smiled a little, realizing he hadn’t worn the tux in ages. It was just one of many ways his life had change in the years since a girl named Katarina Bishop crawled into his window and into his life." — Double Crossed by Ally Carter

You have blotted out the past for me, far more effectively than all the bright lights of Monte Carlo.

You can come share a tasty meal of bread, raisins, and fresh cheese. With that, and The Count of Monte Cristo, anyone can live to a hundred.

People do change.

Among all the occurrences possible in the universe the a priori probability of any particular one of them verges upon zero. Yet the universe exists; particular events must take place in it, the probability of which (before the event) was infinitesimal. At the present time we have no legitimate grounds for either asserting or denying that life got off to but a single start on earth, and that, as a consequence, before it appeared its chances of occurring were next to nil. ... Destiny is written concurrently with the event, not prior to it... The universe was not pregnant with life nor the biosphere with man. Our number came up in the Monte Carlo game. Is it surprising that, like the person who has just made a million at the casino, we should feel strange and a little unreal?

But if you like, you can come share a tasty meal of bread, raisins, and fresh Burgos cheese. With that, and The Count of Monte Cristo, anyone can live to a hundred.

Today, just two generations on, the Monte Carlo method (in various forms) so dominates some fields that many young scientists don’t realize how thoroughly they’ve departed from traditional theoretical or experimental science.

I’m in love, aren’t I? She thought she knew the answer by how much she wanted to be there. Wouldn’t have traded being there for any other location in the world. Wouldn’t have traded it for all the exotic destinations flaunted in Pan Am travel brochures. Not Tahiti, not Monte Carlo, not Hong Kong. No, she wanted to be here, in this ramshackle market not a ten-minute drive from her humdrum house and life. Except it wasn’t a humdrum life anymore, was it? No, I’m at the most exciting place on Earth. The center of the world. The Roman Forum during the reign of Augustus Caesar.

the fact of a leading organ of Evangelical thought being edited for two successive fortnights from Trouville and Monte Carlo was generally admitted to have been a mistake. 

My mother could never have said she loved fall, but as she walked down the steps with her suitcase in hand toward the red Monte Carlo her husband had been waiting in for nearly an hour, she could have said that she respected its place as a mediator between two extremes. Fall came and went, while winter was endured and summer was revered. Fall was the repose that made both possible and bearable, and now here she was was with her husband next to her, heading headlong into an early-fall afternoon with only the vaguest ideas of who they were becoming and what came next.

You have blotted out the past for me, you know, far more effectively than all the bright lights of Monte Carlo. But for you I should have left long ago, gone to Italy, and Greece, and further still perhaps. You have spared me all those wanderings.

I sat there behind the wheel of my car, not sure what I should do, wishing I was someplace else, anyplace else, trying on shoes at Thom McAn’s, filling out a credit application in a discount store, standing in front of a pay toilet stall with diarrhea and no dime. Anyplace, man. It didn’t have to be Monte Carlo. Mostly I sat there wishing I was older.

Rosemary pojechała do Monte Carlo zgnębiona - na miarę swoich możliwości - wprost bezgranicznie.

The ass of a man is the piston that drives the world, and you have a good one. In my prime, I would have corked it with my thumb and then eaten you alive. Preferably by the pool of Le Meridien in Monte Carlo, with an admiring audience to applaud my frontside and backside efforts.

Have you heard of the Monte Carlo method? Ah, it’s a computer algorithm often used for calculating the area of irregular shapes. Specifically, the software puts the figure of interest in a figure of known area, such as a circle, and randomly strikes it with many tiny balls, never targeting the same spot twice. After a large number of balls, the proportion of balls that fall within the irregular shape compared to the total number of balls used to hit the circle will yield the area of the shape. Of course, the smaller the balls used, the more accurate the result.

Kutiupkan setangkup harapan. Halus dan samar. Kemudian mewujud perlahan.

The twins and their friends gave Mother Goose and Merlin good-bye hugs. "Bye, M.G.," Conner said. "Thanks again for saving us in the -" "Listen, C-Dawg, I need a favor," Mother Goose whispered while they were hugging. "Remember my vault in Monte Carlo? Well, I haven't aid the lease in over a year. They're going to throw my stuff out on the street if someone doesn't clean it out. In the back corner, behind Plato's scrolls, you'll find a brown paper bag. Keep whatever you want, but flush the bag. Can you do that for me?" "Um . . . sure?" he said, "But what's in the -" "You're a good man," she said, and patted him on the back. Conner was equally intrigued and disturbed by the request - but that was how Mother Goose left most people she encountered.

During the same Monte Carlo trip, Churchill, while waiting outside the casino for his car, was buttonholed by Frank Sinatra, the American singer, who rushed up to him and shook his hand, saying, “I’ve wanted to do that for twenty years.” After the singer departed, a puzzled Churchill inquired of an assistant, “Who the hell was that?” Churchill

You have blotted out the past for me, you know, far more effectively than all the bright lights of Monte Carlo

The combination of Bayes and Markov Chain Monte Carlo has been called "arguably the most powerful mechanism ever created for processing data and knowledge." Almost instantaneously MCMC and Gibbs sampling changed statisticians' entire method of attacking problems. In the words of Thomas Kuhn, it was a paradigm shift. MCMC solved real problems, used computer algorithms instead of theorems, and led statisticians and scientists into a worked where "exact" meant "simulated" and repetitive computer operations replaced mathematical equations. It was a quantum leap in statistics.

Monte Carlo is able to discover practical solutions to otherwise intractable problems because the most efficient search of an unmapped territory takes the form of a random walk. Today’s search engines, long descended from their ENIAC-era ancestors, still bear the imprint of their Monte Carlo origins: random search paths being accounted for, statistically, to accumulate increasingly accurate results. The genius of Monte Carlo—and its search-engine descendants—lies in the ability to extract meaningful solutions, in the face of overwhelming information, by recognizing that meaning resides less in the data at the end points and more in the intervening paths.

Aster Spanos: Maybe she has a whole new life, somewhere amazing. Like, Buenos Aires or Monte Carlo. Don’t get me wrong, I’d give her hell for doing this to us if she ever comes home. But consider the alternatives. If she didn’t run away...

I will be thirty years old again in thirty seconds. I will take the best room in the Grand Central or the Orndorff Hotel. I will dine on oysters and palomitas and wash them down with white wine. Then I will go to the Acme or Keating's or the Big Gold Bar and sit down and draw my cards and fill an inside straight and win myself a thousand dollars. Then I will go to the Red Light or the Monte Carlo and dance the floor afire. Then I will go to a parlor house and have them top up a bathtub with French champagne and I will strip and dive into it with a bare-assed blonde and a redhead and an octoroon and the four of us will get completely presoginated and laugh and let long bubbly farts at hell and baptize each other in the name of the Trick, the Prick, and the Piper-Heidsick.

I love you,” he says in a low voice, just for me. “You don’t do the love stuff. It’s not your thing.” “Loving you is my thing.

Not really, no,' Jemima said, although Alexa had told her - she could tell that the old lady would no doubt tell her more interesting information. She loved jewellery stories, particularly when they involved a mystery.

He had intended at first to send Ford down in the Chili. It was not gratitude that changed his mind, but respect. Once he had lost office Ford had gone straight to Huxley Field north of Novak Tower, cleared for the vacation satellite Monte Carlo, and had jumped for the New Frontiers instead. Lazarus liked that. "Go for broke" took courage and character that most people didn’t have. Don’t grab a toothbrush, don’t wind the cat-just do it! "Of course you’re coming along," he said easily: "You’re my kind of boy, Slayton.

Recommended Reading The Definitive Guide to Getting Your Budget Approved by Johannes Ritter and Frank Röttgers provides a systematic guide for creating a financial business case. The book includes examples as well as the methods for using Monte Carlo simulation and sensitivity analysis to create the business case. The methods described in the book can also be used for quantifying risks and project costs. Mary and Tom Poppendieck in their book Lean Software Development: describe the lean principles and the types of waste in software projects.

I looked at him over my glass of citronade. It was not easy to explain my father and usually I never talked about him. He was my secret property. Preserved for me alone, much as Manderley was preserved for my neighbour. I had no wish to introduce him casually over a table in a Monte Carlo restaurant. There was a strange air of unreality about that luncheon, and looking back upon it now it is invested for me with a curious glamour. There was I, so much of a schoolgirl still, who only the day before had sat with Mrs Van Hopper, prim, silent, and subdued, and twenty-four hours afterwards my family history was mine no longer, I shared it with a man I did not know. For some reason I felt impelled to speak, because his eyes followed me in sympathy like the Gentleman Unknown.

Do you guys ever feel like you're locked inside a car that's moving really fast? "What kinda car?" Chris asks. Like a fucking red Monte Carlo with a black racing stripe cutting through the middle of it, and there's some superintense Fantomas shit jolting from the car speakers, like Mike Patton and Buzz Osbourne just completely losing it, but no steering wheel. The car doesn't have one. And the car is so out of control, right? It's swerving all over the road, and you're crying, pounding your fists against the window trying to jump out of it, trying to bail from it, and then all of these people start popping up on the road, like your parents and your sister and your friends, and the car is playing human dodgeball with them. It's trying to not run anyone over, but it's not slowing down, either, and then some junkie babe pops up in the middle of the road and the car destroys her, leaving her mangled body in its burnt rubber path, and then it keeps on going and going even though it can't maintain anything close to the same speed.

As for denying the existence of fairies, good and bad, you have to be blind not to see them. They are everywhere, and naturally I have links of affection or dislike with all of them. The wealthy, spendthrift ones squander fortunes in Venice or Monte Carlo: fabulous, ageless women whose birthdays and incomes and origins nobody knows, putting charms on roulette wheels for the dubious pleasure of seeing the same number come up more often than it ought. There they sit, puffing smoke from long cigarette-holders, raking in the chips, and looking bored. Others spend the hours of darkness hanging their apartments in Paris or New York with Gothic tapestries, hitherto unrecorded, that drive the art-dealers demented-gorgeous tapestries kept hidden away in massive chests beneath deserted abbeys and castles since their own belle epoque in the Middle Ages. Some stick to their original line of country, agitating tables at seances or organizing the excitement in haunted houses; some perform kind deeds, but in a capricious and uncertain manner that frequently goes wrong, And then there are the amorous fairies, who never give up. They were to be seen fluttering through the Val Sans Retour in the forest of Broceliande, where Morgan la Fee concealed the handsome knight Guyomar and many lost lovers besides, or over the Isle of Avallon where the young knight Lanval lived happily with a fairy who had stolen him away. Now wrinkled with age, the amorous ones contrive to lure young men on the make who, immaculately tailored and bedecked with baubles from Cartier, escort them through the vestibules of international hotels. Yet other fairies, more studious and respectable, devote themselves to science, whirring and breathing above tired inventors and inspiring original ideas-though lately the unimaginable numbers,the formulae and the electronics, tend to overwhelm them. The scarcely comprehensible discoveries multiply around them and shake a world that is not theirs any more, that slips through their immaterial fingers. And so it goes on-all sorts and conditions of fairies, whispering together, purring to themselves, unnoticed on the impercipient earth. And I am one of them.

Chang came in five minutes later, in the same jeans but a fresh T-shirt, her hair still inky with water from the shower. Her own jacket was pulled down on one side, by her own Smith. Like any ex-cop she looked around, the full 360, seven or eight separate snapshots, and then she moved through the room with plenty of energy, powered by what looked like enthusiasm, or maybe some kind of shared euphoria at their mutual survival through the night. She slid in alongside him. He said, “Did you sleep?” She said, “I must have. I didn’t think I was going to.” “You didn’t go meet the train.” “He’s a prisoner, according to you. And that’s the best-case scenario.” “I’m only guessing.” “It’s a reasonable assumption.” “Did you see the woman in 203?” “I thought she was hard to explain. Dressed in black, she could have been an investor or a fund manager or something else deserving of the junior executive routine. Her face and hair were right. And she has a key to the company gym. That’s for sure. But dressed in white? She looked like she was going to a garden party in Monte Carlo. At seven o’clock in the morning. Who does that?” “Is it a fashion thing? Someone’s idea of summer clothes?” “I sincerely hope not.

A fresh, uplifting mélange of Italian bergamot, mandarin, and raspberry that comprised the opening accord filled her nostrils with the carefree scents of spring. Her imagination soared with memories. The gardens of Bellerose, picnic baskets bursting with summer fruits on sunny Mediterranean beaches, summers spent on the Riviera, yacht parties, and the casino in Monte Carlo. The plain little bottle held the essence of the happy life she had known. She inhaled again, closed her eyes, and allowed her mind to wander, to visualize the images the aroma evoked. Excitement coursed through her veins. She imagined a glamorous, luxurious lifestyle of exotic locales, mysterious lovers, sandy beaches, glittering parties, elegant gowns, and precious jewels. And amid it all, sumptuous bouquets of fabulous flowers, enchanting and romantic, intense aromas of pure, bridal white jasmine and sultry tuberose, and the heady, evocative aroma of rose. Seductive spices, clove with musk and patchouli, smoothed with sandalwood and vanilla, elegant and sensual, like a lover in the night. And finally, she realized what was missing. A strong, smooth core, a warm amber blend that would provide a deep connection to the soul. Love.

By his early-twenties, John F. Kennedy was living one of the most extraordinary young American lives of the twentieth century. He traveled in an orbit of unprecedented wealth, influence, global mobility, and power. As a student and as diplomatic assistant to his father, who served as U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom from 1938 to 1940, Kennedy journeyed to England, Ireland, France, Moscow, Berlin, Beirut, Damascus, Athens, and Turkey, pausing briefly from a vacation on the French Riviera to sleep with the actress Marlene Dietrich. He met with top White House officials and traveled to Cuba, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Santiago, Peru, and Ecuador. He gambled in a casino in Monte Carlo; visited Naples, Capri, Milan, Florence, Venice, and Rome; rode a camel at the Great Pyramid at Giza; attended the coronation of Pope Pius XII; and witnessed a rally for Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. He recalled of these momentous years, 'It was a great opportunity to see a period of history which was one of the most significant.' In a visit to British-occupied Palestine, Kennedy recalled, 'I saw the rock where our Lord ascended into heaven in a cloud, and [in] the same area, I saw the place where Mohammed was carried up to heaven on a white horse.

Italian reporters uncovered evidence that the Vatican had invested in Istituto Farmacologico Serono, a pharmaceutical company that made birth control pills, as well as Udine, a military weapons manufacturer (there were also unconfirmed newspaper reports of church money in gunmaker Beretta, a Monte Carlo casino, and a printing firm that published pornographic magazines).

The universe was not pregnant with life nor the biosphere with man. Our number came up in the Monte Carlo game. Is it any wonder if, like the person who has just made a million at the casino, we feel strange and a little unreal?

D. H. Lawrence saw a very different México and had very different ideas about race. Unlike the others, the British writer spoke only rudimentary Spanish and had very little contact with even English speaking Mexicans. With his wealthy wife’s money, Lawrence toured the country in a rented limousine, looking at archaeological sites and visiting other English speakers. He then holed up in the Hotel Monte Carlo in Mexico City to write a novel about México that propounded his racist theories.

One of our measurement mentors, Enrico Fermi, was an early user of what was later called a “Monte Carlo simulation.

They go out to their work, searching for food…. —Job 24:5 (NKJV) My husband, Keith, and I decided to drive down to Tulip Town and wander the fields of vibrant color the Skagit Valley is famous for. Enchanted, we ordered about twenty different varieties for our half-barrel planters. I loved deciding between the American Dream and the Peking Red, the Black Diamond and the Purissima, the Monte Carlo and the Gudoshnik. We planted the bulbs in September, but it was a bad winter. When spring came, I saw only about one-tenth of the tulips we’d planted. Closer inspection revealed squirrels had lived off our bulbs when other food was really scarce. I was upset and complained loudly, angrily, to Keith, but he only said, “The squirrels needed food.” I grumped about that for a while but slowly came to realize that he was right: Providing nourishment should trump surface beauty every time. I came to see the squirrels as survivors and was glad that the tulips had helped them get through the winter. Lord, help me to understand more quickly that being part of the balance of life means I don’t always get to do things my way. —Rhoda Blecker Digging Deeper: Prv 18:17; Ez 34:18

Monte Carlo (the old name for a roulette wheel)

At the very least, a mortgage had to be pooled with other mortgages of other homeowners. Traders and investors would trust statistics and buy into a pool of several thousand mortgage loans made by a Savings and Loan, of which, by the laws of probability, only a small fraction should default. Pieces of paper could be issued that entitled the bearer to a pro-rata share of the cash flows from the pool, a guaranteed slice of a fixed pie. There could be millions of pools, each of which held mortgages with particular characteristics, each pool in itself homogeneous. It would hold, for example, home mortgages of less than one hundred and ten thousand dollars paying an interest rate of 12 per cent. The holder of the piece of paper from the pool would earn 12 per cent a year on his money plus his share of the repayments of principal from the homeowners. Thus standardised, the pieces of paper could be sold to an American pension fund, to a Tokyo trust company, to a Swiss bank, to a tax-evading Greek shipping tycoon living in a yacht in the harbour of Monte Carlo, to anyone with money to invest. Thus standardised, the pieces of paper could be traded. All the trader would see was the bond. All the trader wanted to see was the bond. A bond he could whip and drive. A line which would never be crossed could be drawn down the centre of the market. On one side would be the homeowner, on the other, investors and traders. The two groups would never meet; this is curious in view of how personal it seems to lend a fellow man the money to buy his home. The homeowner would only see his local Savings and Loan manager from whom the money came, and to whom it was, over time, returned. Investors and traders would see paper. Bob

Mathematicians of probability give that a fancy name: ergodicity. It means, roughly, that (under certain conditions) very long sample paths would end up resembling each other. The properties of a very, very long sample path would be similar to the Monte Carlo properties of an average of shorter ones.

Oh, man,' Beck breathed. 'Check out the car.' It was white with a black top. The hood looked as as long as a football field. 'Sure is big,' was all I could manage to say. Beck gazed longingly at the beast, his eyes glowing in appreciation. 'You know what that is?' 'Uh, no. Should I?' 'It's a fully restored, two-door 1973 Monte Carlo. Muscle car, big time.' 'Bet it's hard to park.

I suggest this passage from the German “philosopher” (this passage was detected, translated, and reviled by Karl Popper): Sound is the change in the specific condition of segregation of the material parts, and in the negation of this condition; merely an abstract or an ideal ideality, as it were, of that specification. But this change, accordingly, is itself immediately the negation of the material specific subsistence; which is, therefore, real ideality of specific gravity and cohesion, i.e.—heat. The heating up of sounding bodies, just as of beaten and or rubbed ones, is the appearance of heat, originating conceptually together with sound. Even a Monte Carlo engine could not sound as random as the great philosophical master thinker (it would take plenty of sample runs to get the mixture of “heat” and “sound.” People call that philosophy and frequently finance it with taxpayer subsidies!

She wouldn’t have traded being there for any other location in the world. Wouldn’t have traded it for all the exotic destinations flaunted in Pan Am travel brochures. Not Tahiti, not Monte Carlo, not Hong Kong. No, she wanted to be here, in this ramshackle market not a ten-minute drive from her humdrum house and life. Except it wasn’t a humdrum life anymore, was it? No, I’m at the most exciting place on Earth. The center of the world. The Roman Forum during the reign of Augustus Caesar. “Let’s explore more,” John said after he deposited a head of broccoli into the cart.

I decided I would follow up every three weeks, religiously, until they bought an apartment or I was dead (tragically young), or I read that they’d perished in a fiery car chase in Monte Carlo. I was going to implement the first F, follow-up, by sending them emails about new developments, listings I thought they would like, and highlights from The Serhant Team newsletter.

I am now thinking of the next step: to recreate a low-information, more deterministic ancient time, say in the nineteenth century, all the while benefiting from some of the technical gains (such as the Monte Carlo engine), all of the medical breakthroughs, and all the gains of social justice of our age. I would then have the best of everything. This is called evolution.

Monte Carlo tree search makes predictions by generating examples (rollouts) and then makes a prediction based on the experience of this algorithm with these examples. Modern variations of Monte Carlo tree search further combine tree search with reinforcement learning and deep learning in order to improve predictions. Deep learning is used in order to learn the evaluation function instead of using domain knowledge. For example, AlphaZero uses Monte Carlo tree search for rollouts, while also using deep learning to evaluate the quality of the moves and guide the search. The Monte Carlo tree together with the deep learning models form the hypothesis used by the program in order to move moves. Note that these hypotheses are created using the statistical patterns of empirical behavior in games.

Monte Carlo trees tend to explore a few promising branches deeper based on evaluations from previous experience, whereas minimax trees explore all unpruned branches in a roughly similar way. The human approach to chess is similar to the former, wherein humans evaluate a small number of promising directions of play rather than exhaustively considering all possibilities. The result is that the style of chess from Monte Carlo tree search is more similar to humans than that from minimax trees. The programs resulting from Monte Carlo trees can often take more risks in game playing, if past experience has shown that such risks are warranted over the longer term. On the other hand, minimax trees tend to discourage any risks beyond the horizon of tree exploration, especially since the evaluations at leaf levels are imperfect.

The Monte Carlo tree search method is naturally suited to non-deterministic settings such as card games or backgammon. Minimax trees are not well suited to non-deterministic settings because of the inability to predict the opponent’s moves while building the tree. On the other hand, Monte Carlo tree search is naturally suited to handling such settings, since the desirability of moves is always evaluated in an expected sense. The randomness in the game can be naturally combined with the randomness in move sampling in order to learn the expected outcomes from each choice of move.

Most of the examples used in this book were created with my Monte Carlo generator, which I introduce in this chapter. Yet it is far more a way of thinking than a computational method. Mathematics is principally a tool to meditate, rather than to compute.

Mathematicians of probability give that a fancy name: ergodicity. It means, roughly, that (under certain conditions) very long sample paths would end up resembling each other. The properties of a very, very long sample path would be similar to the Monte Carlo properties of an average of shorter ones. The janitor in Chapter 1 who won the lottery, if he lived one thousand years, cannot be expected to win more lotteries. Those who were unlucky in life in spite of their skills would eventually rise. The lucky fool might have benefited from some luck in life; over the longer run he would slowly converge to the state of a less-lucky idiot. Each one would revert to his long-term properties.

The Basics: Monaco is a city-state on the French Riviera. It's known for its casinos, wealthy people, royal family, and yachts. Look, there's Princess Alexandra! Just kidding. You're not going to see any royals up close. And you probably don't know who Princess Alexandra is anyway.

All your technical prowess will evaporate if your mind and emotional landscape aren’t solid. My return from Monte Carlo has made one thing clear: I need to recharge.

Mallaby Road, Harrow, as the Saint discovered, was one of those jolly roads in which ladies and gentlemen live. Lords and ladies may be found in such places as Mayfair, Monte Carlo, and St Moritz; men and women may be found almost anywhere; but Ladies and Gentlemen blossom in their full beauty only in such places as Mallaby Road,

Let’s take one last peek at the Monte Carlo simulation. We won’t penalize the active portfolio for taxes, as we will give it the benefit of the doubt that no one would be silly enough to do active investing in a taxable account. Let’s just say that the active investor acts with human nature and pays the 1.5 percent penalty. So, now the average dollar invested has a 3.5 percent drag comprised of 2.0 percent expenses and 1.5 percent penalty for chasing performance. Running this in the Monte Carlo simulation against Kevin’s 0.23 percent fees, while he watches SpongeBob, creates the odds listed in Exhibit 5.6.

Here’s the thing about an apple: it sticks in the throat. It’s a package deal: lust and understanding. Immortality and death. Sweet pulp with cyanide seeds. It’s a bang on the head that births up whole sciences. A golden delicious discord, the kind of gift chucked into a wedding feast that leads to endless war. It’s the fruit that keeps the gods alive. The first, worst crime, but a fortunate windfall. Blessed be the time that apple taken was. And here’s the thing about an apple’s seeds: they’re unpredictable. Offspring might be anything. Staid parents generate a wild child. Sweet can go sour, or bitter turn buttery. The only way to preserve a variety’s taste is to graft a cutting onto new rootstock. It would surprise Olivia Vandergriff to learn: every apple with a name goes back to the same tree. Jonathan, McIntosh, Empire: lucky rolls in Malus’s Monte Carlo game.

He spent winters at the Villa Henriette in Monte Carlo, which had a beautiful view of the Mediterranean.

There is scarcely a book of mine that didn't have The Pigeon Tunnel at some time or another as its working title. Its origin is easily explained. I was in my mid-teens when my father decided to take me on one of his gambling sprees to Monte Carlo. Close by the old casino stood the sporting club, and at its base lay a stretch of lawn and a shooting range looking out to sea. Under the lawn ran small, parallel tunnels that led in a row to the sea's edge. Into them were inserted live pigeons that had been hatched and trapped on the casino roof. Their job was to flutter their way along the pitch-dark tunnel until they emerged in the Mediterranean sky as targets for well-lunched sporting gentlemen who were standing or lying in wait with their shotguns. Pigeons who were missed or merely winged then did what pigeons do. They returned to the place of their birth on the casino roof, where the same traps awaited them. Quite why this image has haunted me for so long is something the reader is perhaps better able to judge than I am.

As noted previously, there are a number of other algorithms beyond search, prime factors and Monte Carlo methods, though many of these apply only to very specialist mathematical problems and may never have practical applications. As yet, though, the range available is relatively limited. Some of this may be due to the limitations that are imposed in dreaming up algorithms without an actual device to run them on, but it is entirely possible that the list will always be fairly short, as we shouldn’t underestimate the difficulties of getting quantum algorithms that will run. However, Lov Grover commented in an interview with the author a while ago: ‘Not everyone agrees with this, but I believe that there are many more quantum algorithms to be discovered.’ Even if Grover is right, quantum computers are never going to supplant conventional computers as general-purpose machines. They are always likely to be specialist in application. And, as we shall see, it is not easy to get quantum computers to work at all, let alone develop them into robust desktop devices like a familiar PC.

What is wrong with me that I like to give in, like I’m creased paper and all anyone has to do is apply the slightest pressure, and I fold myself right up?

Every sight of Marco hits me like the first. It makes me clumsy and jumpy. It makes me stupid.

I glared at the old man, then said, “So are you completely bald underneath there or not? Cuz honestly? It looks good. Your wig, I mean. Like … you’re ready to win it all back on a single throw in Monte Carlo. Like…” I gazed at his hair. “Like … your client just won the Nobel Prize in poetry but won’t attend the acceptance ceremony and so you’ll accept the award on his behalf. It’s a nice wig. Really, it is. Now, if you’ll excuse me.” I sat my glass of sparkling water on Wallace’s plate, then wandered back to the appetizers table. You just can’t help it, can you? I mentally kicked myself in the head—I’d just jeopardized

Dancer Raven Wilkinson was one of the first African American ballerinas permitted to join a ballet company. During the 1950s, she danced with the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo under the condition that she pose as a white woman by painting her face.

The second ingredient on which our identity is based is the same as for the chariot. In the process of reflecting the world, we organize it into entities: we conceive of the world by grouping and segmenting it as best we can in a continuous process that is more or less uniform and stable, the better to interact with it. We group together into a single entity the rocks that we call Mont Blanc, and we think of it as a unified thing. We draw lines over the world, dividing it into sections; we establish boundaries, we approximate the world by breaking it down into pieces. It is the structure of our nervous system that works in this way. It receives sensory stimuli, elaborates information continuously, generating behavior. It does so through networks of neurons, which form flexible dynamic systems that continuously modify themselves, seeking to predict109—as far as possible—the flow of information intake. In order to do this, the networks of neurons evolve by associating more or less stable fixed points of their dynamic with recurring patterns that they find in the incoming information, or—indirectly—in the procedures of elaboration themselves. This is what seems to emerge from the very lively current research on the brain.110 If this is so, then “things,” like “concepts,” are fixed points in the neuronal dynamic, induced by recurring structures of the sensorial input and of the successive elaborations. They mirror a combination of aspects of the world that depends on recurrent structures of the world and on their relevance in their interactions with us. This is what a chariot consists of. Hume would have been pleased to know about these developments in our understanding of the brain.

She’s here now. I will fix this, too. No more treating her like a mistress. No more leaving her to her own devices. She’s going to become a real wife. Learn Italian and take on her duties, no more excuses. If she can navigate the mall, she can act as my hostess and serve on a few charity boards. She had too much time on her hands. That was the problem.

She’ll be happy and forget about this whole misadventure. Considering her condition, hormones are more than likely to blame for most of this mess. I’ll call Doctor Wiederman and get a referral for a head shrink, or have him prescribe Diane the pills that Mother and Chiara swear by.

Finally, after what feels like minutes, he lowers his hands and blows out another breath. “Diane, I mean the rough stuff is over. Not our marriage.” He waits. What am I supposed to say? Our marriage never started. We only ever had the ‘rough stuff.’ When I don’t say anything, he goes on. “You don’t really like it. It’s just all you know.” His face hardens. “I corrupted you. You were innocent. You don’t know how it’s supposed to be.

I want you,” he says, low and deep and soft. “You and your mama. I am going to keep you both with me. I do not care if you are furious with me or disappointed or angry at the world. There is nothing you can do or say

Why won’t you ever fight in my corner?” Her quiet voice is hollow. Lonely. “At least sometimes.

I defied everyone so that I could make her miserable. I press my lips to her temple and taste salt. “All I’ve ever wanted to do was make you happy, Diane.” “Well, when do you plan to start?” she asks, sniffling.

Confident his counter-measures were as secure as he could make them, he had slowly slipped into a routine existence. The biting winter hadn’t helped – more than a few times, he found himself wondering why he hadn’t fled to the Bahamas or Monte Carlo, like the jewel thieves in Hollywood films. Stockholm was comfortable but conformist, and its long dark nights seemed to drain all meaning from life. He was finally free from the British and the Russians – but for what purpose? In the evenings, he’d wander around the city looking at people, trying to fathom what drove them, inspired them – what they were doing

We never knew Jim's surname but to us, as youngsters, he was "Jim Bool the Fool". It may not have been respectful but Jim Bool was the most outrageous liar you could ever meet. If it was test cricket time Jim would tell, in all seriousness, of how he played for Australia, of the centuries he had made and he wickets he had taken. In the football season he would describe the days when he had captained Melbourne. He had won King's Prizes for rifle shooting, the gun championship at Monte Carlo and when Melbourne Cup time came around we were treated to a vivid account of how he had won the Cup in his jockeying days.

Randomness can be of considerable help with the matter. For there is another, far more entertaining way to make the distinction between the babbler and the thinker. You can sometimes replicate something that can be mistaken for a literary discourse with a Monte Carlo generator but it is not possible randomly to construct a scientific one. Rhetoric can be constructed randomly, but not genuine scientific knowledge. This

We don’t know he’s a shyster.” “His name’s Monte Carlo and he’s from New Jersey. What else do we need to know?

Pike stepped into the first bay and spotted the man from the Monte Carlo in an office at the rear of the building. He was in front of a television with his back to the door. The Dodgers were playing a day game. Pike checked to see that the other two men were still struggling with the fender, then slipped toward the office as silently as a fish gliding through water. On

It was not so much, Paul was beginning, justifiably, to believe, to support extravagant wives that men toiled in the city, as was the opinion generally expressed, especially by foreign visitors, as it was to escape from these wives. (….) They were having, he was by way of informing himself, an extraordinarily good time. To be sure, they dashed nimbly after the dollar, but even that part of the game resembled gambling or fox-hunting. It was an adventure replete with frills, false trails, happy discoveries, comic coincidences. There was so much, indeed, of sportsman's luck in everything that went on there that Wall Street was prone to impress him as a kind of glorified Monte Carlo, the Circassian walnut cabinets in each office, stored with liquors and tobacco, supplying the place of the bar, while the Stock Exchange made an excellent substitute for the salle de jeu.

Alberto Repossi Since opening his first shop in the Hotel Hermitage in Monte Carlo in 1977, Alberto Repossi has remained one of the most distinguished and sought after jewelry designers in the world. He was commissioned in the mid-nineties to design a ring for Diana and Dodi Al Fayed, and he continues to design for many notable royal families and cultural figures. I hope that now, after ten years, the time has come when conjectures have died off and everyone remembers her elegance and follows her legacy of kindness and charity. As for me, as a designer, I shall have in mind an image that shall always be a source of inspiration. I only have one regret: a meeting that will never take place.

It isn’t easy to look inconspicuous doing a stakeout in an Aston Martin Vanquish, but it’s easier in Monaco and Monte Carlo than just about anywhere else, and so far, no one seemed to give me a second thought.

Did you pack our supper?" Paul asked. She had indeed. For the trip, Sabine put 'Ma Cuisine' aside and filled the food hampers with luck and industry. She made little green pies of wild leeks that she'd found growing alongside the road on the way back from the hotel. A Joséphine salad was thrown together using leftovers and bits from the garden and pantry- chicken from the night before, curry powder, preserved lemons, and dried coconut. And for something sweet, she made curd tarts of lavender honey and lemon jam. They were the recipes of her grand-mère, not of Escoffier. And as she made them they felt like a gift- not for the children and the interchangeable grandchildren and great-grandchildren- but for herself. She also placed a small cask of wine in the hamper, some soft cheese that she had made from goat's milk, and several bottles of lemonade.

She returned to the kitchen, where she'd been making sugared flowers. Mint leaves, tiny violets and old-fashioned rose petals, heavy with perfume, lay on the counter. Very gently she dipped each one into the stiff egg whites, then in confectioners' sugar, and then placed them on the baking sheet, which she put in the warm oven, the door ajar. It gave the room the scent of a garden, heady and sweet. Sabine had planned to store the sweets in canning jars- there were still a few gaskets and lids left- and save them for cake. When she was a child, her grand-mère had once made her a Saint-Honoré for her birthday. It was the most wondrous cake in the world. Not a cake at all but a composition of tiny puffs of choux pastry filled with vanilla cream, very much like profiteroles, but molded together with caramel and covered with whipped chantilly cream fresh from the dairy. Her grand-mère decorated it with candied flowers and mint leaves. Sabine never had anything like it before or since and suddenly wanted to make that cake again.

Chicken legs, beef ribs- they ate the food with their fingers, dipping into the horseradish sauce, feeding each other greedily. Laughing. They rolled leaves of cabbages and chewed on them like monkeys. They ate the golden potatoes as if they were apples. By the time they returned to the making of stock, and took the roasted veal bones from the stove and put them into the pot and filled it with enough cold water so that it could slowly simmer, their own legs no longer ached, their feet felt as if they could stand the weight of their bones for yet another day and they tasted of garlic and wine. "Thank you, chef," he said. "Thank you, chef." She opened the cheese larder and took out a wedge of runny Camembert, which she covered with a handful of white raspberries that he had draining in a colander by the sink. He opened a bottle of port. The dishes could wait. They sat on the back stairs of the tall thin house and looked over the lights of the steep city of Monte Carlo and out into the endless sea. The air was cool, the cheese and raspberries were rich and tart; the port was unfathomably complex with wave and wave of spiced cherries, burnt caramel and wild honey.

The sapphires! Of course, you were going to tell me,' she propped herself up on her elbow, one hand on his chest. 'Can't we have sex first?' He made to move her hand further down his body. 'Sex soon, talk first,' she replied defiantly, stealing the line from a Harold Robbins novel she'd recently finished.

How do you know so many people down here?' he asked, impressed. 'I know them from London, really. That is the only good thing about never having long-term boyfriends, you make much more useful friends who are boys!

We passed the Monte Carlo and the MGM. We

She drove downtown and turned left off Fifth Street into East Fremont Street. Up ahead was what most people think of when Las Vegas is mentioned. It was a blaze of lights and color and neon: gambling halls jammed up against each other on both sides of Fremont from Second on up to Main, for two solid blocks. Overshadowing all the rest was the big sign above the Golden Nugget on the left and, beyond that, the huge mechanical cowboy pointed the way to the Pioneer Club with his animated hand and thumb. And the Las Vegas Club, the Monte Carlo, the Frontier Club, and all the rest. Colleen drove through slowly because the place was full of men and women and cowboys. A guy blew a bugle at us as we crossed First Street and we had to wait a few seconds for a man on a horse to get out of our way at Main where Colleen turned right and then swung back to head out of town. Then she drove like the wind all the way to Hoover Dam.

I have two ways of learning from history: from the past, by reading the elders; and from the future, thanks to my Monte Carlo toy.

The genius of Monte Carlo—and its search-engine descendants—lies in the ability to extract meaningful solutions, in the face of overwhelming information, by recognizing that meaning resides less in the data at the end points and more in the intervening paths.

The gambler’s fallacy is also called the “Monte Carlo fallacy.

though in the year before the first use of X-rays this was not known; indeed, it did not become known for seventy years, when this same thigh was X-rayed after a fall in Monte Carlo in 1963.

she was carefully putting the Monte Carlos onto a pretty plate decorated with violets. ‘Do you think Joe and Rachel might become an item?’ Clara asked, as she pulled out Tassie’s cups and saucers. ‘Oh, I can’t say yet,’ said Tassie vaguely. ‘Could be. I saw a little heart in my cup this morning.’ ‘Perhaps we should seek out a Wise Woman in Chippenham and see if we can’t make a spell for them to fall in love,’ said Clara with a cheeky smile at Tassie. ‘Oh no, dear, you can never do a love spell for someone else, because it comes back to you.’ Clara wasn’t sure if Tassie was serious. ‘What do you mean?’ ‘If we do a love spell for Joe to fall in love with Rachel, then he might fall in love with us, and the last thing I need is a man hanging about my garden with a hangdog face. I have already had a litter of rescue dogs in my lifetime to care for.’ Clara laughed. ‘I love that! Well, if he fell for you, it would be because you’re amazing and you are the

Thank fuck the camera loved him more than he loved himself. He could recline on silk sheets for cologne or seethe in a sportscar. His life became the silk sheet he had once reclined upon: smooth, compliant and without substance. In pursuit of that something, he enterprised. His upbringing on Lake Como receded as he found himself sipping sangria on a Monte Carlo balcony, basking on his cruiser in Cannes or cheering Chelsea within a glass suite above the stands. Whether he felt dead inside wasn’t up for discussion.

Dorsey was out of her league. When a woman like Kay Waverley took you on over a man, you were done for. It was the scandal of the season and all of Monte Carlo agreed; poor little Dorsey wasn’t handling it well.

She seemed out of place at the Fairweather. Too posh, as Susan said. Too well dressed. She never strolled along the shore or went bathing or brought a picture postcard. She just sat on the veranda all day with a book she never read, gazing out to sea. Probably wondering why on earth she came here. Susan had said. She looks as if she'd be more at home in Monte Carlo. I know- she's lost all her money gambling and she's waiting for the sea to warm up before she throws herself in. I hope she remembers to pay her bill first.

Monte Carlo was the place to gamble, gossip and sunbathe, exchange an old lover for a newer one, and acquire next season’s fashion statement a full three months before the rest of Paris.

It is true money will not buy you real happiness, but as a personal preference I would much rather have an angry strangle wank in the comfort of a private jet en route to Monte Carlo, than in a broom closet in the basement of a seedy crack house in Bangkok

The Hadrah Hakim The last I saw of the Hadrah was in the summer of 1967, when Andy and I decided to take a week's vacation and tour the Greek Islands. Hakim kept his promise of a week's use of the Simorgh and the Kahyya’m, and sent his plane to collect us at Heathrow. My Master was on his way from London to Monte Carlo, where the Kahyya’m was docked.

Esquécese de todo e o mar chámalle na lembranza, chámalle con forza, duramente, mentres ela bota a melena para atrás, sen se decatar, mecanicamente, porque na praia un rapaz dille estás moi guapa e ela sente como se a enchesen de areas toda por dentro e o rapaz cóllelle a man e bícanse e nadan xuntos e o sol vainos dourando, emborrachando, e ela non di nada porque o rapaz fala, fala, fala e ela non quere saber nada, oír nada, senón soñar, soñar, só soñar e pasar as tardes na illa bailando cos pes metidos na auga e coas caras ben xuntiñas, collidos, electrizados subindo por aquel monte de lume, subindo entre brasas, subindo ata que aquela forza poderosa se desfaga en luciñas de cores e non quede máis que a quente recordanza fumegando, correndo para ver unha película italiana que ela volverá ver despois alá na cidade chuviosa de inverno, contándolle todo á súa amiga, chorando, non de rabia, non de desengano, senón de tristeza ou de noxo, chorando primeiro sen saber ben por que, despois pola chuvia, porque non hai sol, porque non hai mar, porque non ten praia, porque non o ten a el, chorando e contestando a unha carta e outra e outra ata que un día deixa de escribir porque non ten ganas e as lembranzas xa non lle din moito alí no "whisky-club", falando con outros rapaces, bailando, dicindo cal é o teu signo do horóscopo e a min gústanme os rapaces de vintecinco anos e el era un neno de dezasete, qué parva, cómo pasa o tempo, qué parva que é unha ás veces.

Monte Carlo was blocking the driveway. The trashcan was still on the curb, so he dragged it up to the garage. The motion lights came on, blinding him. Will held up his hand to block the light as he unlocked the front door. ‘Hey,’ Angie said. She was lying on the couch in front of the television, wearing a pair of cotton boxer shorts and a tank top. She didn’t take her eyes off the set as Will let his gaze travel along her bare leg. He felt the urge to climb onto the couch and go to sleep beside her, or maybe something else. That wasn’t how their relationship worked, though. Angie had never been the nurturing type and Will was pathologically incapable of asking for anything he needed. The first time they had met

Well, then, mademoiselle, shall I take you to the Riviera?'" "'Yes,'" -Camille smiled- "'I'd like that.' 'Have you brought your bathing suit?' he'd ask. 'Perfect. And an evening gown as well! We must go to the casino. Don't forget your silver fox coat, it can be cool in Monte Carlo in the evening.' There was a nice smell inside the car. The smell of well-worn leather... It was all so lovely, I remember. The crystal ashtray, the vanity mirror, the tiny little handle to roll the window down, the inside of the glove compartment, the wood. Its was like a flying carpet. 'With a bit of luck we'll get there before nightfall,' he promised. Yes, he was that kind of man, my dad, a big dreamer who could shift gears on a car up on blocks for hours on end and take me to the far corners of the earth in a suburban garage. He was really into opera, too, so wee listened to Don Carlos, La Traviata or The Marriage of Figaro during the trip. He would tell me the stories: Madame Butterfly's sorrow, the impossible love of Pelléas and Mélisande- when he confesses, 'I have something to tell you' and then he can't; the stories with the countess and her Cherub who hides all the time, or Alcina, the beautiful witch who turned her suitors into wild animals.