7-7-7-7 - Lucky 7's

Lucky 7's were not so lucky for the lotto company that lost big when four 7's came up. Do not feel to bad though, they still made money on the month.

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/89689007.html

"Wednesday night, all 7s came up in Pennsylvania Lottery's Big 4 drawing, resulting in a whopping $7.77 million payout to 3,107 winning tickets.

Even more oddly, the news comes on a day when the Super 7 jackpot is $7.3 million, and Cash 5's top prize is $770,000.

The Big 4 payout was a staggering 1,573 percent of sales, according to lottery spokeswoman Kirstin Alvanitakis.

In other words: The lottery has to dish out about $7.2 million more than it took in for that drawing.

"We definitely lost money on the Big 4, that's for sure," Alvanitakis said. "But it's great for our players. People love to play quadruple numbers."

"It's definitely not an April Fools joke," she said."

Reason TV - 3 Reasons Public Sector Employees Are Killing The Economy

Video embedded below.



"1. They cost too much. ...
2. We can't fire them. ...
3. They create a permanent lobby for expanded government and higher taxes."

'Most Prolific' Serial Killer in US History Sentenced to Death

What puts him in contention for consideration as being the 'most prolific' serial killer in US history; 130 suspected victims with the belief their could be many more. Rodney Alcala, known as the Dating Game Killer, was sentenced to death for the murder of a handful of his victims.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1262485/Rodney-Alcala-sentenced-death-murders-women-girl-12.html

"Police have released more than 100 photographs of unidentified women and girls amid fears they could be the victims of America's worst ever serial killer.

The pictures were taken by Rodney Alcala, who was sentenced to death by lethal injection for the savage murders of a 12-year-old girl and four women.

However, the 66-year-old has admitted killing another 30 women in the 1970s and police believe there could be many more victims."

Gmail Has a Vowel Outage

A 'vowel outage' is exactly what you would think; and Google's Gmail had such an outage for a while today. The problem has been solved, but for a while it was frustrating for the users afflicted. The letter 'Y', which is only a vowel sometimes, was not effected; and no that is not a joke.

http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/todays-vowel-outage.html

"Over the last hour we've received numerous reports of this issue via our help forums, from colleagues at Google, and via email you’ve sent us. Some of you have already found creative workarounds for communicating without vowels, like Aaron, who sent us this:


Having 80.8% of the alphabet available is significantly below the 99.9% full letter uptime reliability we strive for. Since identifying the root case of this issue, we’ve started bringing vowels back to Gmail, so you should see them back in your account within the next few hours if you don’t already."

United States And Russia Announce New START Agreement

Obama announced that the United States and Russia have agreed to new START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) terms. It still has to be approved by the Senate, but if it is it will be a further reduction of arms. There is some arguing about what it means for missile defense; and if it allows for missile defense I will give it the thumbs up. It is still not entirely clear to me why this is necessary in the first place unless there was some agreement here to deal with Iran in preventing them from joining the nuclear club. The arms race between two super powers is long over, and I suspect the Russians were planning on downsizing anyways for cost reasons.

http://closingvelocity.typepad.com/closing_velocity/2010/03/surprise-nuclear-role-models-fail-to-impress-nuclear-rogue.html

"After months of haggling with the Russians over US missile defense and its relation to the new START nuclear weapons agreement, President Obama announced victory today:

“With this agreement, the United States and Russia – the two largest nuclear powers in the world – also send a clear signal that we intend to lead. By upholding our own commitments under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty, we strengthen our global efforts to stop the spread of these weapons, and to ensure that other nations meet their own responsibilities,” Obama said.

And while there are hints that Republican senators will block the START treaty because of an ambiguous mention of missile defense in the non-binding preamble of the accord, the White House is adamant that they stood up against the Russian demands to link missile defense to nuke cuts:

No Constraints on Missile Defense and Conventional Strike:  The Treaty does not contain any constraints on testing, development or deployment of current or planned U.S. missile defense programs or current or planned United States long-range conventional strike capabilities.

The White House has not released the text of the treaty, so I'll give them a temporary "bravo" if their claim of keeping the missile defense link out of START indeed pans out as advertised.

"

Navy’s New Submarine Escape Trainer

Video embedded below. (via)



"Four Steps to Avoiding a Watery Grave

1. Below the tank, a trainee zips into a buoyancy suit, then clambers up into the escape chamber.


2.Inside, the sailor plugs into an air valve to start inflating the suit while an instructor attaches a safety tether. The trainee then grabs onto handles as the water pours in.


3. Once the compartment is flooded, a hatch is opened overhead. The tether is released, and the buoyancy of the suit carries the sailor to the surface, where additional instructors wait.


4. Upon surfacing, which in a real emergency would be in the middle of the ocean, a raft deploys from a hip pouch on the suit, puffing out like a blowfish. It may be a little undignified, but it beats sitting in a steel casket on the seafloor.

"

The Power of Cameras

If you were a contestant on a television show and required to 'zap' another contestant with ever increasing voltage what would you do? I think most people would play along in the begging knowing that everyone who signed up knew what they were in for; but when the other person starts begging you to stop as you approached lethal voltage, I would hope people would stop. That was not the case for a majority of people who thought they were on a French game show.

If this sounds a bit familiar, it is because it is similar to the Milgram experiment carried out in the 1960's. That experiment was a test of if people would listen to authorities and found that 60% would apply the lethal volt; a smaller percentage then a half century later with cameras replacing the authority.

http://townhall.com/columnists/BrentBozell/2010/03/19/tv_torture_in_old_europe

"In Paris, documentary makers invented a game show called "Zone Xtreme." Recruiters found 80 contestants to participate in this game show. Each of them sat across from a man whose job was to answer a series of questions while strapped into an electrifiable chair. In a game of word associations, the man was told that any wrong answers would merit punishment in the form of electric shocks of 20 to 460 volts, zapped by a console operated by the contestant.

As the actor gave incorrect answers, the show's star, a well-known TV weatherwoman on France 2, exhorted contestants to keep administering the electric shocks and not to bend to the actor's screams of protest. (He would say things like "Get me out of here, please! I don't want to play anymore!") The studio audience also cheered on the torture, yelling for "punishment." The actor would finally stop answering, dying or going unconscious from the shocks.

What the contestants were not told was that this was all fake -- the man was an actor, and there were no electric shocks being administered.

The filmmakers then produced a TV documentary called "The Game of Death" to expose how more than 80 percent of their contestants were goaded to the grisly end of the electrocution exercise. Only 16 people walked away from the game."