Saturday, April 10, 2004

Lottery Turf War

I have to admire a 77 year old woman who has run a private lottery for as many years, if not longer, than Michigan has been in the gambling business.  Not only that, her private lottery business paid off better than so called legalized gambling.

“Officials say Heloise Johnson, 77, of Oak Park was the “matriarch” of the private lottery, running it with her daughter and three adult grandchildren.”

It’s a shame the state had to get their hands on the operation.

“Authorities break up private lottery, seize $2.2 million.”

Posted by John Venlet on 04/10 at 03:44 PM
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Water Balloons in Space

Complete with photos and videos.  “Did you ever wonder what it would be like to pop a water balloon in space?”

Via Fred Lapides.

Posted by John Venlet on 04/10 at 07:12 AM
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Toleration Obfuscation

Atrios asks “Would you tolerate thirty thousand dead Americans?, after reading a Washington Post piece titled “Tolerating Casualties, From the Top Down.”

My answer, Americans tolerate thirty thousand plus dead year in and year out.

The link, just previous, will take you to the U.S. Department of Transportation Traffic Safety Facts 2000.  There were 37,409 traffic fatalities recorded in the year 2000.

Atrios, and the bevy of commentors at his blog, 305 comments at 8:42 A.M., are not so concerned with the deaths of military members, as they are concerned with using the deaths of military personnel in Iraq or Afghanistan to as a rallying point to advance their political agenda.

Posted by John Venlet on 04/10 at 06:34 AM
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Bloody Shiite

“Unless you have the instincts of a pre-Reformation Catholic peasant-or Mel Gibson — it is nearly impossible to grasp this appreciation of suffering and death. But here it is not death as a redemptive power, death as spectacle — a public expression that seeks the admiration of man as much as God. This is what, in my mind, separates Shia radicalism from its Sunni counterpart. Wahabbi and Palestinian suicide bombers seek honor and glorification by killing their enemies; the Shiites’ spiritual apotheosis, on the contrary, comes from having their enemies kill them — a kind of suicidal exhibitionism that fetishizes Hussein’s fate at Karbala. Early Christians felt that the blood of martyrs nourished the Church; Shiites believe that martyr blood will embellish their own holiness and that of their families for untold generations.”

Steven Vincent, writing in the National Review, in a piece titled “The Ungovernable Shiites—It’s their tradition.”

Via J. Bowen at No Watermelons Allowed.

Posted by John Venlet on 04/10 at 05:52 AM
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