Geoff Parkin (BC Children's Hospital Foundation Board Member): "This year's dream lottery made a profit of about 2.2 Million, that's going to go straight toward BC Children Hospital's foundation."

"100% of the proceeds from the lottery are going directly to childhood research"

Total revenue from ticket sales (8.9 mil) - Retail value of all prizes (3.4 mil) = 2.2 mil profit?

Somebody made a killing, there's a missing 3.3 Million.
Does the lottery vendor (ie government contractor) get 37%? And the charity gets 25%?

*scam *fraud

Somebody has been watching vendors from another country on the internet, yeah?

Durbin cites a Federal Reserve study which estimated the actual cost of the transactions. I'll trust that and not your uncited assertion.

And as Durbin says, the entire reason this is necessary is because of the Mastercard/Visa duopoly. If it were a free market, you're right -- it would be stupid for the government to step in and regulate this.

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:

As with all things, go where you are happy. But realize that this colossal moron (Durbin) is the reason why BoA (and eventually everyone else) is charging you 5 bucks a month for a debit card. It was his rider that put a cap on the fee BoA could charge to vendors.
That $5 a month you're so mad about? Yeah - you've been paying it all your life. Banks have always charged vendors for credit transactions. And they don't cost 'pennies'. Such a statement demonstrates astounding ignorance about finances. It costs major cash to handle all the transactions that happen on a daily basis. The more convenient it became, the more EXPENSIVE it became. Yeesh.
So when Dummy Durbin puts his STUPID rider in the FRA, it capped what banks could charge vendors. Banks got to make up that cost. That means the money you USED to pay in slightly higher costs at the vendor is now directly going from you to the bank instead of through the middleman.
Will there be a decrease of costs at the vendor level to match it? Who knows? But you lunkheads whining about having to pay the bank fee for what you were used to getting for free have only one logical target. Dummy Dick Durbin and his party stupid Democrats. Getting mad at the bank is literal hubris.

As with all things, go where you are happy. But realize that this colossal moron (Durbin) is the reason why BoA (and eventually everyone else) is charging you 5 bucks a month for a debit card. It was his rider that put a cap on the fee BoA could charge to vendors.

That $5 a month you're so mad about? Yeah - you've been paying it all your life. Banks have always charged vendors for credit transactions. And they don't cost 'pennies'. Such a statement demonstrates astounding ignorance about finances. It costs major cash to handle all the transactions that happen on a daily basis. The more convenient it became, the more EXPENSIVE it became. Yeesh.

So when Dummy Durbin puts his STUPID rider in the FRA, it capped what banks could charge vendors. Banks got to make up that cost. That means the money you USED to pay in slightly higher costs at the vendor is now directly going from you to the bank instead of through the middleman.

Will there be a decrease of costs at the vendor level to match it? Who knows? But you lunkheads whining about having to pay the bank fee for what you were used to getting for free have only one logical target. Dummy Dick Durbin and his party stupid Democrats. Getting mad at the bank is literal hubris.

Good Morning America says this video has gone viral. Not here on the Sift though.... ah well.

Apparently it was an altercation between a street vendor and a customer over a painting that cost $10. Gosling paid the vendor $20 and all was well.

Here's the scoop:

JWH-018 makes you feel more stoned than the first time you got stoned. If you don't know what that means, well... no wonder people were freaking out.

JWH-122 which i use now daily, is a LOT more mellow. I can smoke it once and be stoned all day but relaxed, more CBD like. 75$ for 5 grams that lasts months. I'm talking pure powder that i mix into my own smokable. I don't smoke blends of rose hips and bay bean sprayed with acetone dissolved JWH, like vendors sell.

These are synthetic cannabinoids, they are full agonists and bind very tightly to the CB receptors. THC and CBD are partial agonists and mitigate each others effects. These chemicals are no joke and have been available for a long time, proving that if cannabis was legal that NOTHING bad would happen. These drugs are far more potent and the world has had access to them for years by mail-order, and the results are in.

You WILL freak out if you are not a cannabis user or someone with experience smoking. I've smoked for over a decade before trying these compounds and it was like i was 16 all over again. The strange thing is the intense effects last only up to an hour, then you're ok again. The effects seem additive, whereas you can smoke cannabis non-stop, you actually reach a point of intoxication that can be nauseating (happened two times on JWH-018, I was sweating, throwing up, couldn't come down... but then I did... and it happened from using too much 018 too quick).

Also, my anxiety and depression seemed very well managed on a combination of JWH-122 and Sertraline HCl (gen Zoloft). I no longer get angry and sad, and want to just throw it all away because the world is big and scary.


Cannabis prohibition is very strange. I like being told as an American that i can't be tortured, held without cause, executed in street... but the can'ts should all be bad things. I can't smoke cannabis BECAUSE I'm American. Even the Israeli govt is legalizing medical marijuana for its citizens, yet my country who gives them money to exist, says I cannot. I can't because I'm American. Wierd. So I'll pay less to get more stoned.

Deathcow,
Back in '92, I used to love EA and Apple. Somehow they became letigiously evil after the dot-com crash.
I play BC2 through Steam, and most of my games through Steam. I have too many friends there to just pick up and switch because of EA's Origin (which I also have used for Warhammer Online and plan on never using again). The difference between Steam and Origin is that Steam supports all sorts of games, not just Valve's, and I can play BC2 without having Steam running when I don't want to be bugged by online friends. Origin, on the other hand, is a distribution system for EA only - it's social network features are shitty. It is required to play BF3 even if you buy the BF3 DVD at the store. Origin doesn't have any incentive to get better, or leaner, as it comes not as an option to the customer, but as a requirement. It's a resource hog already and it will only get worse. Steam has to prove to both vendors and players that it's worth their while. It is an option and not a requirement, and best of all, you own your games for a lifetime. With Origin, you lose all your games after 2 years of inactivity. I do not want to rent my games from EA. I want to own them and use them through a third-party service.

More on this nonsense:
http://www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/board.pl?action=viewthread&boardid=1&threadid=124661

Let me know where you play, maybe I come squad with you sometime

>> ^possom:

Which came first, the market or the train?


My wife (Thai) says that the train was there first, with the original line going in perhaps in 1905 (not 100% sure), and the market being started in 1984 according to a quick google search in Thai.

The original center of the market was in vacant area next to the train line. However, the rental prices for a market stall in that original area were set high enough that it was hard for people to make a profit. Apparently someone with the state railway service decided to rent out space adjacent to (read: *on*) the tracks at a much lower rate than the privately-owned market area. The majority of stall vendors moved onto the railway line in spite of the inconvenience of trains going through, and the "gimmick" of the train interruptions increased business from tourists both Thai and foreign.

The state railway owns all of the land that train lines run on in Thailand, and I guess that leasing out that land is very common. In the province that I live in, the land surrounding the tracks outside of town is leased out as farmland, and some of the length that runs through town has been leased out by builders that put up rows of shop-houses that are then rented out. The back walls of the shop-houses are probably 1-2 meters or so away from the tracks, so not quite as close as the market stalls you see in the video but still plenty crammed in.

So anyway, I guess that the land with railway lines is frequently utilized by 3rd parties here in Thailand, but the Maeklong market is the only place where it is encroached on in this way to be used as market space. My guess is that there are probably rules that prevent other areas from doing likewise, but that the Maeklong market got grandfathered in due to its status as a tourist attraction.

@DerHasisttot

In response to your final question (about the education of firearm owners), it varies depending on the state. Some states require training in firearms safety when you make a legal purchase (of course, some people choose to buy illegally or through unlicensed vendors, but that's a different issue). Other states require a child-lock on the gun at all times when you're not using it. The NRA (National Rifle Association) in the US, which obviously is pretty pro-gun, are huge advocates of training all kids (whether their families are gun owners or not) about how to safely handle firearms. My family never owned a gun, but our neighbors did and they showed me how to treat a rifle with respect.

I've seen in the U.S. hidden camera video of kindergartners playing with an (unloaded) firearm that was left unsecured in a room with them and clearly they didn't understand the danger it presented--they aimed at other children in the room and pulled the trigger laughing. But I'm guessing this is because they assumed it wouldn't fire.

When interviewed afterwards, they all looked horrified and uncomfortable when the reporter doing the hidden camera story asked them what they would have done if the gun had accidentally gone off for real. They clearly understood it could seriously hurt another child. They just didn't think the gun they had found would actually go off. That's why I'm a bit suspicious when you say it takes from 8-10 years of age to understand the concept of death. Those kids were kindergartners (around 6 years old) and they clearly got the idea, although they hadn't thought far enough ahead to realize that would be the consequences of their actions at the time.

I agree with you partially about the glorification of violence in society--particularly U.S. society. I feel that all too often violence is portrayed in the media as an acceptable solution to problems that really could have been solved non-violently. In the U.S. we seem to take perverse pride in people who are behaving badly "getting what's coming to them" (i.e. violence). But I don't think this particular video glorifies that aspect of violence.

On the other hand, violence is a part of life. Violence and the threat of violence is necessary to maintain a stable society. For example, police need to be able to use violence to stop criminals who are actively attempting to hurt others and/or the officers. There are certainly times (self-defense) where individual violence is necessary. I don't think it does anyone--particularly children--any good to stick our heads in the sand and hide from that fact that violence is a part of human nature. As long as we are educating children about the moral and ethical implications of violence, I have no trouble with them viewing it.

And that includes videos like this which include imaginary violence. Let's face it, imaginary violence is fun! The reason is that it is free from the horrible consequences that accompany real violence. When we play cops 'n robbers as kids, we pretend to shoot each other. But part of the fun is that when everyone is "dead" we can all get back up and play again. And most kids (unless they've had some kind of psychotic break with reality) "get" the fact that this is because there is a difference between imaginary violence (the kind they see on TV or in video games) and real violence.

Like I said before, that's why I find this video to be one of the most artful music videos I've ever seen. It gets us to look at that imaginary violence of play in a new way. It is much more "realistic" than we expect. At the same time we realize it is still imaginary violence. Yet, though we realize it is imaginary it still makes us feel uncomfortable! Artistic brilliance, in my opinion.

To be honest, I'd love to see one of those "Kids watch..." videos that have been floating around the Sift tackle this video and get real children's ideas about the violence portrayed in this vid. I think it would be really illuminating.

Eh... composed music is overrated. One of my favorite aspects of WoW, even moreso in BC was the ambient noise. The sound was damn near experimental but always felt rock solid along with the art direction. I liked the new Cataclysm content for 1-60 but after burning through the 80-85 bit I'm done with WoW, forever. I will always fondly look upon the years I played it on and off.

GW2 looks great and I'll definitely get it - but seriously, we need to get back to basics. Forget WoW for a second and let's make a virtual world, remember one of the first MMO's Ultima Online? Yeah, we need to revisit something on that scope in 3D. Do you remember how much more was possible in UO than in 99% of these shite MMOs? I used to walk upon entire PC run cities, I used to have a two story house by a productive mine, I used to live there! I used to have ship battles with many other people. One time I stole a rival guild's ship that was filled to the brim with weapons and armor and unloaded it to guildmates in a port outside of another city.

WoW is an amazing game but people have to realize that it isn't necessarily that WoW recycled all of it's elements from elsewhere... it did so with so much style and balance (not so sure if that balance is still there). Blizzard are king's of gameplay mechanics of which they have many armchair critics. I think probably that they are always changing the mechanics to always make the game feel like the gameplay is changing because it is the only way to make the game feel like it is a tad different because obviously, the player has no impact on the world of Azeroth. It is original in the way it tackled many MMO problems. But, stop trying to mimic it, it's a losing battle. Zones were cool in WoW, but the other original MMO UO was a full on virtual world. That is where we need to go again. If someone wants to get rid of their old armor and set it on the ground, they should be able to do so. If they want to build a vendor outside of the city, they should be able to do that. If they want to explore the open seas - they should be able to do that. If they want to try to pickpocket a PC or a NPC's wares... If they want to set portals to certain areas attached to a rune... fully customizable gear... Where are you Lord British, hiding in your castle? For the most part MMOs are a terribly, shitty waste of time and money.

I just thought I'd point out that I've ran my main computer (of course I'm a hardware geek, so I know my stuff--no conflicts is another way to put it) for 4 years on Vista SP2 64-Bit WITHOUT ONE CRASH (this is a: on for 24/7 as it acts as a media server and Windows Media Center Extender-provider)! Now I'm on Win 7 64-Bit and same deal, nothing, no problems, no crashes, and I have my fair share of peripherals plugged in.

People need to realize that somewhere towards the end of Vista and into Windows 7 Microsoft has taken their crappy old software and made it work extremely well, considering what it has to do. It has drivers for virtually everything and if your a scientist, engineer, or something similar you're using Windows for this very reason: Windows will recognize your device and allow you to write a driver to let you do whatever you need it to do; easily!

People are afraid to switch out Windows XP. They're expecting to go through all the hassle only to get the same crap. But, Windows 7 is definitely a new breed of design for Microsoft. You can tell the old guys must have been canned or given an epiphany inducing lashing by Bill: Bill was retired from production for a long time, but when Vista came out, it literally pissed him off (as he was trying to use it himself) and there was a big bust-up/fight internally; so in a way I'm glad Vista started out as a complete and utter piece of crap that performed as well as a brick in a GrandPrix race. It led to Windows 7 and the service packs that made Vista very usable.

Again, back to why Windows IS successful even when it was crashing... You can right your own driver AND IT WORKS. Now days it works great, and the development software is pretty straight forward and is fairly good. That is the one thing he should point out in the video is the extremes Microsoft went to (and still does), to get an OS that would do everything. Yeah, it crashed and was buggy, but realistically you won't be running your new hardware on a MacOS. People with MacOS's (in the past especially) are one trick pony users. They do music or they do art. They don't need a virtual driver that supports incoming data from a USB blender/centrifuge that will let you write a program using the driver to tamper with the spin and modulation rate of the device while getting real-time data updates. Hell, the roving "Doppler on Wheels" uses Windows for this very reason.

Microsoft takes a lot of flak, but they filled their role very well and I was never surprised that it was buggy (however, I'll totally agree that the initial version of Vista was a complete an utter joke--like I said I didn't get it till they had their second service pack and had great user feedback; especially, since I went 64-bit).

Windows 7 though IS the OS to use or some sort of Linux distribution. But, with the great support built in, right off the bat (this time) and the easy to make drivers for developers and hardware vendors, it's getting hard to find a reason to not use it other than: "I hate Windows and/or Bill Gates".

Thought I'd write this bit if people didn't know the story or reasons why the latest Windows have changed direction so drastically.

Some people may still wonder why there is such a legacy extension in Windows with supporting stuff that old, but there are plenty of companies out there that proving this. I've come across at least several examples of software I've seen from a vendor being sold as new that was likely built in Windows 3.1. 16-bit apps in 2010-2011? How do they even have the software to make this stuff anymore?

Regardless, it makes me thank whomever at Microsoft has the arduous task of having to make sure NTVDM still operates in modern versions of Windows. Well, except for 64-bit os where there is no longer 16-bit support, so perhaps this will force the hand of those still building legacy apps into this century.

>> ^Engels:

A YouTube add appeared at the bottom of my screen for a goat meat vendor. A bit unfortunate.


I got an ad for youtube advertising.

A YouTube add appeared at the bottom of my screen for a goat meat vendor. A bit unfortunate.

@WKB

True, but when the Columbine school shooting was perpetrated, conservatives were quick to point the finger at Marilyn Manson's lyrics. I'm not saying they were right, and I'm not saying that Fox deserves all of the blame here either.

I do think though, that the people pumping that kind of rhetoric onto the airwaves deserve SOME responsibility for atrocities like this. Allow me to compare the Woodstock of 1970 to the Woodstock of '99 for an example.

-------------------------------------------------------------

>>>>>>The 1970 Woodstock (billed as "3 days of Peace and Music") resulted in reports like this:

"The New York Times covered the prelude to the festival and the move from Wallkill to Bethel.[13] Barnard Collier, who reported from the event for the Times, asserts that he was pressured by on-duty editors at the paper to write a misleadingly negative article about the event. According to Collier, this led to acrimonious discussions and his threat to refuse to write the article until the paper's executive editor, James Reston, agreed to let him write the article as he saw fit. The eventual article dealt with issues of traffic jams and minor lawbreaking, but went on to emphasize cooperation, generosity, and the good nature of the festival goers.

When the festival was over, Collier wrote another article about the exodus of fans from the festival site and the lack of violence at the event. The chief medical officer for the event and several local residents were quoted as praising the festival goers."

--------------------------------------------------------------

>>>>>>The 1999 version of the event (featuring bands like Metallica, Rage Against the Machine, Korn, Limp Bizkit, Kid Rock and the Red Hot Chili Peppers who are all, dare I say, a bit angrier [lyrically speaking] than the likes of Arlo Guthrie or Joan Baez) is painted in a much different color:

"Some crowd violence and looting was reported during the Saturday night performance by Limp Bizkit, including a rendition of the song "Break Stuff". Reviewers of the concert criticized Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst as "irresponsible" for encouraging the crowd to destructive behavior.

Violence escalated the next night during the final hours of the concert as Red Hot Chili Peppers performed. A group of peace promoters led by an independent group called Pax had distributed candles to those stopping at their booth during the day, intending them for a candlelight vigil to be held during the Red Hot Chili Peppers' performance of the song "Under the Bridge". During the band's set, the crowd began to light the candles, some also using them to start bonfires. The hundreds of empty plastic water bottles that littered the lawn/dance area were used as fuel for the fire.

After the Red Hot Chili Peppers were finished with their main set, the audience was informed about "a bit of a problem." An audio tower caught fire, and the fire department was called in to extinguish it.

Back onstage for an encore, the Chili Peppers' lead singer Anthony Kiedis remarked how amazing the fires looked from the stage, comparing them to a scene in the film Apocalypse Now.[12] The band proceeded to play "Sir Psycho Sexy", followed by their rendition of Jimi Hendrix's "Fire". Kiedis later stated in his autobiography, Scar Tissue that Jimi Hendrix's sister had asked the Chili Peppers to play "Fire" in honor of Jimi and his performance at the original Woodstock festival, and that they were not playing it to encourage the crowd.

Many large bonfires were burning high before the band left the stage for the last time. Participants danced in circles around the fires. Looking for more fuel, some tore off panels of plywood from the supposedly inviolable security perimeter fence. ATMs were tipped over and broken into, trailers full of merchandise and equipment were forced open and burglarized, and abandoned vendor booths were turned over, and set afire.[13]

MTV, which had been providing live coverage, removed its entire crew. MTV host Kurt Loder described the scene in the July 27, 1999 issue of USA Today:

"It was dangerous to be around. The whole scene was scary. There were just waves of hatred bouncing around the place, (...) It was clear we had to get out of there.... It was like a concentration camp. To get in, you get frisked to make sure you're not bringing in any water or food that would prevent you from buying from their outrageously priced booths. You wallow around in garbage and human waste. There was a palpable mood of anger."

After some time, a large force of New York State Troopers, local police, and various other law enforcement arrived. Most had crowd control gear and proceeded to form a riot-line that flushed the crowd to the northwest, away from the stage located at the eastern end of the airfield. Few of the crowd offered strong resistance and they dispersed quickly back toward the campground and out the main entrance."

>>>>>>See also, this poignant response from a person in the crowd: http://newsroom.mtv.com/2009/08/17/woodstock-legacy/ (crowdmember comments @ 2:20)

----------------------------------------

Now now easy there big fella, before you start telling me about how correlation does not imply causation consider this: an article recently published by the American Journal of Psychiatry concluded that:

"Childhood exposure to parental verbal aggression was associated, by itself, with moderate to large effects on measures of dissociation, limbic irritability, depression, and anger-hostility." Furthermore, "Combined exposure to verbal abuse and witnessing of domestic violence was associated with extraordinarily large adverse effects, particularly on dissociation. This finding is consonant with studies that suggest that emotional abuse may be a more important precursor of dissociation than is sexual abuse."
See: http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/163/6/993

Maybe not the best example I could have found but I've already spent WAY too much time on this post. The point is, WORDS carry a lot of power. Even if the pundits (right OR left) never came out and said it, the implication of violence was certainly there at times.

I KNOW Fox has lead the charge of fear mongering in the name of ratings but anyone else who subscribed to that level of attack should share some of the blame as well. Again, not saying that they should take all or even a lot of the blame, but they should be responsible for the violent laced rhetoric they spout.

I say STOP THE AD HOMINEM ATTACKS and we'll see less violence against PEOPLE and (hopefully) more enthralling arguments where the IDEAS are being attacked (which I'm all for) :-)

p.s. sry for the huge post but i was on a roll