INTERESTING: Why do you gamble?

Thursday, October 25, 2007

For the seretonin rush? I hope to throw the “Hail Mary” pass and radically change my life, from shortages and scarcity to abundance and plenty. Hence, I have some “rules” that I try to abide by.

(1) Don’t chase your losses. What’s gone is theirs.

(2) If you “win”, don’t give it back.

(3) Manage your money — trip limits, session limits, game limits. Frankly any kind of limits I can think off.

(4) Minimize losses; let winning run. (Conflicts with don’t give back!)

(5) Stay calm and unemotional.

(6) The jackpot is NOT on the next spin. Just one more spin. It’s due to hit.

(7) It’s supposed to be “fun”.

(8) Focus on the big hit in the short term; the house edge will break you.

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INTERESTING: You can NOT stop people

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/22/opinion/22adams.html

Op-Ed Contributor
A Two-Cigarette Society
By DAVID G. ADAMS
Published: October 22, 2007

***Begin Quote***

WHEN it comes to the health of our children, two cigarettes may be better than one. Young smokers who begin their habit with nicotine-laden cigarettes need a cigarette that will not leave them to later fight the ravages of addiction.

***End Quote***

Sigh. More stupidity!

You can NOT stop people from putting “stuff” into their body.

Forget it. Delete it. Purge the concept from your brain.

We have gotten to the mess we are in by memes (ideas, thinking, concepts) like this.

Leave people alone to make their own decisions about what is best for them.

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INTERESTING: Paradigms?

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Top 10 Mysteries of the Mind

http://www.livescience.com/health/top10_mysteriesofthemind-1.html

***Begin Quote***

Consciousness

Cryonics

Mortality

Genes or environment

Laughter

False memories

Biological clock

Amputee’s leg

Sleep

Dreams

***End Quote***

We see through a dark and cloudy window. A window that we know little about?

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INTERESTING: Casino defies evacuation order

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/fireblog

Barona Casino defies evacuation order
12:41 a.m.

***Begin Quote***

Sheriff’s Lt. Phil Brust said Barona Casino was told to evacuate as part of a mandatory evacuation order given earlier Sunday night for Wildcat Canyon Road.

“They said they would ‘shelter in place’ and did not evacuate,” Brust said.

The casino was not under lockdown and patrons could leave if they chose, he said.

***End Quote***

Now that’s interesting. “Mandatory evacuation” doesn’t apply to a casino.

:-)

I don’t think the men with guns in the gang called “california gooferment” will appreciate that attitude.

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INTERESTING: Trading Your Paycheck for a Coin Purse

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

http://www.safehaven.com/article-8633.htm

October 16, 2007
Trading Your Paycheck for a Coin Purse
by The Mogambo Guru

***Begin Quote***

“The damned government has now ruined the money so badly that the little bit of metal in the old coins is now worth more than the face value of the coin, but the government can’t wiggle out of paying for their sins by letting people not pay…taxes!”

JMR Arlo S. was cheery as he sent a link to Rense.com, whereupon one learns that somebody has figured out how to beat the inflationary destruction of the money by the actions and inactions by the Lying, Cheating Government (LCG) and the Lying, Cheating Federal Reserve (LCFR): Use old coins!

The headline was, “IRS Suffers Staggering Defeat”. In short, the guy paid his employees with old silver dimes, silver dollars and old gold U.S. coins according to their face value. Thus, he could pay his workers with silver dimes, silver quarters, silver dollars and gold coins, and thus the employee made so little money (according to the face value of the coins) that they fell below minimum income reporting thresholds, and thus no income tax was due.

Mr. Rense explains, “In other words, if a worker is paid with such coins, his taxable ‘income’ (if any) can only be the face value indicated upon the coin money paid – i.e., $1.00 for a circulating silver dollar or $50 for a circulating gold U.S. coin.”

The government, on the other hand, argued that the market value of those coins made them very valuable, and thus the employees owed taxes on the true value of their coins, not the paltry pittance of the face value. The IRS argued that, “Obviously, a $20 coin made of gold is worth at least $750, which is the market price of gold!”

So, “The essence of the argument is that under the Constitution, Congress is obligated by law to mint and circulate such coins as demand requires, and must establish the value of coins as they are used as legal tender, but the coins’ market value, arising as valuable personal ‘property,’ is a distinct, separate attribute of such coins, and is of no legal consequence if the coins are used as legal tender.” Hahaha! Fabulous!

***End Quote***

This is earth shaking.

It only works for imho American Eagles. Where the Mint has put a dollar value unrelated to the underlying value of the coin.

http://www.usmint.gov/mint_programs/american_eagles/index.cfm?Action=american_eagle_gold

So one buys American Eagle coins and gives them as a gift or trade. For tax reporting purposes, each coin is Fifty Dollars; not their value of $750 dollars.

A great tax dodge!

While the cited case is used to bypass the income tax laws, I’m always interested in getting around the gift tax limits (i.e., the 12k limit).

By extension:

Silver Eagle = 1 dollar = 13.49 market value = 161,880 gift value
Gold Eagle = 50 dollars = 763.80 market value = 4,582,800 gift value
Platinum Eagle = 100 dollars = 1441.00 market value = 172,920 gift value

Now, I’m neither a doctor, lawyer, accountant, or indian chief; nor do I play one on TV. But, I bet that they have just nuked the “gift taxes”.

I don’t think it will be long before the change the law, rules, and the coins.

But till then, it seems like there is a big hole you can drive a truck thru.

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UPDATE: To all my sharp eyed readers out there. (Zero) My fingers left contact with my brain when I wrote this. The correct number is $183,312.

It doesn’t invalidate the premise since I don’t know too many people who can give away 182k. What it does mean is that the 12k gift limit is temporarily in limbo!

If I had an elderly relative, then some specific planning might be in order.

imho!

NOTE: My usual disclaimer applies. I am not a doctor, lawyer, accountant, or indian chief. Nor do I play one on TV. And, I haven’t stayed in a holiday inn express in recent memory.

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INTERESTING: the teaser doesn’t say

Friday, October 19, 2007

http://www.nbc.com/The_Tonight_Show_with_Jay_Leno/video/#mea=168805

*** begin quote ***

Jay’s Monologue 10/16
A gift for Ann Coulter

*** end quote ***

Now I like Jay Leno. But here’s an example of how the “old media” doesn’t get it.

First there’s a commercial for Intel. OK, have to pay for the clip, storage, and transmission. Then, 90 seconds of snips from his monologue.

Note that the teaser doesn’t say “part of”, or “excerpts from”. It says “jay’s monologue”.

Argh!

Dumb, dumb, dumb.

Do they think they are fooling people or that we are stupid?

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INTERESTING: Slap in the face to Torre

Thursday, October 18, 2007

The Yankees top brass are brass monkeys!

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INTERESTING: think that the guy’s balking

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

http://sports.myway.com/news/10172007/v5081.html

Wahoo! Indians Move to Cusp of World Series With 7-3 Win Over Red Sox
Oct 17, 1:29 AM (ET)
By TOM WITHERS

***Begin Quote***

CLEVELAND (AP) -Hang tight, Colorado Rockies. There’s another team roaring through October.

And you just might see them in the World Series.

The Cleveland Indians, relying on a throwback pitcher who looks as if he stepped out of their 1948 team photo, moved one win from another crack at winning an elusive championship.

Pumping his arms with an old-school windup, Paul Byrd blanked Boston long enough and Casey Blake homered to start Cleveland’s seven-run rampage in the fifth inning as the Indians beat the Red Sox 7-3 Tuesday night for a 3-1 lead in the AL championship series.

***End Quote***

Does anyone think that the guy’s balking when he throws? It’s like a HUGE advantage over the hitters.

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INTERESTING: Dear Abby 2.0

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

AP Exlusive: ‘Dear Abby’ announces support of same-sex marriage – Examiner.com

*** begin quote ***
What Jeanne Phillips, aka Abigail Van Buren, finds offensive – not to mention of dubious intelligence – are homophobic jokes, phrases like “That’s so gay,” and parents who reject
*** end quote ***What I found interesting is that it’s not your grandmother’s “dear abby”.

It’s sort of a modest fraud upon the reader. The column reveals later on that for five years the daughter has been writing it. And, with ghost writers, who knows who’s advice people have been getting. I do know that growing up, my grandmother and my aunt would discuss “Dear Abby’s” advice. They usually disagreed and were much more blunt about it. They had little tolerance for “scatter brained women” or “undisciplined men”. I think they’d have been like Judge Judy on steroids in this day and age.

In any event it’s a cultural icon that has been modernized.

Wonder what the original would have said. I know what my grandmother would have said: MYOB! And, my aunt would have chimed in with “why do i have to pay for it”.

So, I’ll MYOB and ask “why do i have to pay for gooferment to be involved in marriage”? Hopefully, I’m not “undisciplined” about these actions.

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INTERESTING: How to win at roulette

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

I thought that title would get your ‘attention’. This is my second post to John’s blog, he gave me authorship privileges to write ‘one’ article a couple of weeks ago, and now here I am putting another post on his blog! (I may lose my ‘interim’ author privileges, eh?) Well here goes…my late father wrote some memoirs before he died, and in those he wrote a piece about how he won on the roulette tables. Not always win he said, but more often than not. He looked at the roulette wheel as a circle, with various ‘arcs’ within it. I believe he had memorized the position of the numbers on the wheel, or maybe he carried a picture like the one below with him.

His ‘process’ was to look at the previous numbers that had ‘hit’ on a wheel (all casinos display them as a list…probably about the last 20 spins I believe). He would look for ‘patterns’ in the hits, ie, an abundance of numbers hitting that fell into a particular ‘arc’ of the wheel. In other words, take the picture below and assume the roulette wheel is a clock. Divide the clock into four sections, e.g., 12 – 3 o’clock, 3 – 6 o’clock, 6 – 9, and 9 -12. He would look at the list of the previous displayed hits on the wheel, and on some roulette tables he noticed that the most frequent numbers that hit fell into one of these four arcs, at least more times than the other arcs of the wheel. So on that roulette table, he would then place his bets on the nine or ten numbers (1/4 of the possible 38 numbers) that are located in that arc. For example, let’s say most of the numbers that had been hitting were numbers in the ‘6 – 9 o’clock’ section of the wheel. Looking in the sample wheel below, those numbers would be: 6, 10, 31, 19, 8, 12, 29, 25, 10, and 27.

Now if you follow his logic, it would imply that certain roulette tables have wheels that are slightly off-level, or for some reason have a tendency for numbers to land in a particular arc of the wheel. They are probably manufactured such that this is supposed to be an impossibility, but who knows….I know it worked for my dad, maybe it was the humidity of the room and its affect on those wheels, or some other phenomena like that…or maybe it was because this was over 15 years ago and they didn’t have the technology to make wheels like they do today. I also must confess I haven’t tried this yet, but I will on my next trip to a casino, and then I will let you know!

roulette1.gif

Image above compliments of: http://www.ds.unifi.it/VL/VL_EN/games/games5.html