Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Mega Millions mania has plunged a Maryland McDonald’s into a bubbling cauldron of controversy hotter than a deep-fried apple pie.
Workers at the fast-food joint who pooled their cash for tickets are furious at a colleague who claims she won with a ticket she bought for herself and has no intention of sharing.
“We had a group plan, but I went and played by myself. [The ‘winning’ ticket] wasn’t on the group plan,” McDonald’s “winner’’ Mirlande Wilson 37, told The Post yesterday, insisting she alone bought one of the three tickets nationwide that will split a record $656 million payout.
“I was in the group, but this was separate. The winning ticket was a separate ticket,” the single mother of seven said as she and her fiancé left her home in the squalid Westport neighborhood to attend church.
The Haitian immigrant refused to show what she said was the winning ticket, claiming she had it hidden in another location and would present it to lottery officials today.
Pressed as the day went on, she became more cagey.
“I don’t know if I won. Some of the numbers were familiar. I recognized some of [them],’’ she said. “I don’t know why’’ people are saying differently. “I’m going to go to the lottery office [today]. I bought some tickets separately.”
With winning tickets also sold in Illinois and Kansas, a single Maryland winner would get an after-tax lump sum of $105 million, or $5.59 million a year for 26 years.
This is why I hate lotteries so much.
Say what you will about people who make their profit by running some kind of business, but at least the profits are realized because, somehow, a product or service was provided to someone else. So if there’s some dispute coming out about where the profits should be going, people end up arguing about the who, what, when, where & why of the product/service coming to be.
These poor miserable wretches are arguing about the five W’s involved with exchanging a dollar for a crummy piece of paper…which piece it is…that determines who gets five million a year for 26 years.
Hard feelings are inevitable. Goodwill and mutual respect are not part of the equation. And in this case, in times recently past, they were — the group bought some tickets together. So something has been destroyed here. And it isn’t an unusual situation with lotteries.
I’ve written elsewhere that you can probably determine, with some good rugged accuracy, which direction our society is headed simply by tuning in to an AM radio station on a daily basis and counting how many times per week you hear an ad that says “find out if you qualify.” The same is true for the level of activity observed, on a weekly or monthly basis, with regard to lotteries. The common thread is: People trying to get hold of free stuff without doing or producing anything that would be valuable to anybody else.
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When a jackpot gets to be this ridiulously large, I toss in a couple of bucks. But when my wife reported that a bunch of folks from her workplace had went in together on the recent drawing, I deliberately didn’t buy anything of my own. Not that would have made a hill o’ beans difference of course, but if I am going to beat prodigious odds to win half of a billion dollars, I’m going to try to reduce the odds that this money will be the cause of a gigantic lawsuit and many destroyed friendships.
The odds of avoiding all that may be longer than the lottery odds themselves, but as they say, “Give your dreams a chance.”*
* BTW, a pernicious little slogan if ever I heard one. I work at my dreams, and that’s the best chance they will ever get in this life.
- nightfly | 04/03/2012 @ 13:46