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University study proves Maine’s lottery amounts to a multi-million-dollar tax on the poor
WAITE, Maine — Wayne Seidl remembers the day a woman showed up at his shop and plunked her paycheck on the counter. She asked him to cash it in exchange for lottery tickets. It had been a hard week, she said.
Seidl, co-owner of the Waite General Store in northeastern Washington County, recalled the woman had three, maybe four, kids at home. He told her he felt the money would be better spent on food or clothes for her children. He refused to sell her the tickets. But he doubts it made much of a difference.
“If they don’t buy them here, they’ll go somewhere else,” he said.
Seidl, a former town selectman in Waite, pop. 101, has no shortage of such stories. Another frequent customer, he said, makes a 90-mile daily trip from Calais to Waite to Houlton, buying $25 scratch tickets at every stop along the way. One man routinely spends $200 a day on the lottery. Other regular buyers are on food stamps, unemployed or on welfare, he said.
more
http://pinetreewatchdog.org/university-study-proves-maines-lottery-amounts-to-a-multi-million-dollar-tax-on-the-poor/
In her photos, Ishiuchi Miyako focuses on the dynamics, tensions of postwar Japan
"Yokosuka Story No. 98," a 1976-1977 Gelatin silver print by Ishiuchi Miyako, is part of the "Ishiuchi Miyako: Postwar Shadows" show at the Getty Center. (Ishiuchi Miyako / The J. Paul Getty Museum)
Leah Ollman
There are two Ishiuchi Miyakos. One who followed a relatively conventional path for a Japanese woman of her generation (born 1916) — marriage, children, some work outside the home to help support her family. The other Ishiuchi, her daughter, made herself into something of an appropriation and reinvention of the first.
Born in 1947, the year of Japan's "peace constitution," Fujikura Yoko took up photography in 1975. She assumed her mother's maiden name as her professional identity, superimposing an autonomous, self-determined postwar life upon one prescribed by tradition.
Ishiuchi gained recognition immediately for her work, earning honors extremely rare for a woman in Japan's then-overwhelmingly male photographic sphere. In 1979, she was included in the exhibition "Japan: A Self-Portrait" at the International Center of Photography in New York, the lone woman among 18 men. In 2005, she represented Japan at the Venice Biennale. Now, the Getty Museum presents her first major show in the U.S., the deeply affecting "Ishiuchi Miyako: Postwar Shadows."
"Apartment #55," a 1977-1978 Gelatin silver print by Ishiuchi Miyako, is part of the "Ishiuchi Miyako: Postwar Shadows" show at the Getty Center.
more
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-ca-cm-getty-postwar-photos-20151025-story.html
How Do You Explain Ben Carson's Success in Iowa?
By Charles P Pierce
There is before us now yet more evidence that, especially on the Republican side, giving pride of place to Iowa in our nominating process is a truly terrible idea since, especially on the Republican side, the Iowa caucuses are a ridiculous system weighted toward increasingly ridiculous people. The most recent Iowa Poll, the gold standard in such matters, bears this out to a frightening extent.
The headline is that Dr. Ben Carson has surged past Donald Trump among likely caucus-goers. But it is more than worth your while to scroll down a bit. You may have noticed that Dr. Ben, despite having a voice that could anesthetize small rodents, has ideas that fairly scream, "Bananas Crazy!" The Iowa Poll people decided to run some numbers on that very question. Here are the results.
And we're off.
Ben Carson has said that the Affordable Care Act is the worst thing to happen to America since slavery, and 55 percent of Iowans polled think this opinion makes him "very attractive." If you add in the "mostly attractive" results, then 81 percent of the people polled think he's right on the money there.
Ben Carson has said that the Holocaust would have turned out differently had every Jewish person in Europe been armed, and 51 percent of Iowans polled think this opinion makes him "very attractive." If you add in the "mostly attractive" results, then 77 percent of the people polled like what he said.
And the cherry on top is the fact that an aggregate 96 percent of Iowans polled think Ben Carson "approaches issues with common sense."
Theoretically, democracy is a hell of an idea, isn't it? Can we just let the cows vote now?
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a39121/ben-carson-iowa-voters/
Hissing, Gun-Wielding Subway-Station Masturbator Turns Out to Be a Retired Cop
On Monday evening, a woman had the awful but, unfortunately, not uncommon experience of getting flashed while using the New York subway system. As the NYPD told Gothamist, the 38-year-old was standing on a platform in the Fifth Avenue N/R station "when she heard a hissing noise beside her. When she looked to see what the noise was, she observed the suspect manipulating his penis outside of his pants." After learning what had happened, a male bystander followed (and filmed) the creep as he walked toward the exit, which is when the situation became really scary.
According to the cops, the suspect "pulled out a black handgun, pointed [it]" at the other man, and told him to back off.
The incident somehow became even more disturbing once the police managed to track down and arrest the masturbator on Wednesday. As the New York Daily News reports, his name is Steven Esposito — and he's a retired NYPD officer (which means he's permitted to carry a weapon). The 56-year-old Staten Island resident was arraigned on charges of menacing and public lewdness and has been released without bail.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/10/gun-wielding-subway-masturbator-is-a-retired-cop.html
Women ‘don’t understand fracking’: Expert
A large number of women are opposed to "fracking," the controversial process for extracting gas and oil from underground shale deposits, because they don't understand it, a female scientist has told The Times of London
Averil Macdonald, chairwoman of shale gas lobby group U.K. Onshore Oil and Gas and a professor at the University of Reading, said women tended to act on gut instinct and were more likely to reject fracking because of a lack of education.
"Frequently the women haven't had very much in the way of a science education because they may well have dropped science at 16. That is just a fact," Macdonald told The Times.
"Women do tend not to have continued with science. Not only do [they] show more of a concern about fracking, they also know that they don't know and they don't understand. They are concerned because they don't want to be taking [something] on trust. And that's actually entirely reasonable."
more
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/10/23/fracking-women-dont-understand-it-expert.html
oink oink....
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