Best gift ever

One of the best gifts I’ve ever received was a losing lottery ticket. My brother bought it for me. I realize that doesn’t sound like a great gift, since it only cost a dollar, and it lost. But the way he did it was pure evil genius.

No one wants to buy a winning lottery ticket for someone else. You’d bang your head on the wall for the rest of your life, yelling “WHY OH WHY DIDN’T I KEEP THAT ONE??? WHAAAWHAAAAWHAAAA!!!” That’s bad for the wall.

My brother solved that problem by buying for himself two additional lottery tickets with the same numbers as the one he got for me. He explained that in case my ticket won, he wanted to be twice as rich. It’s the thought that counts.

The Dilbert Blog

Adams goes on to explain that he’s told this story “about a hundred times, always to good effect.” So, it’s a gift that keeps on giving.

A photo that says it all

Source: The New York Times

Thou shall not bear false witness

Stephen Colbert shows Georgia Representative Lynn Westmoreland to be a hypocrite about the Ten Commandments. Video.

Uncommon Carriers

From a review of John McPhee’s latest book, Uncommon Carriers:

This is also the theme that ties together “Uncommon Carriers,” almost all of which, like McPhee’s previous books, first appeared as New Yorker articles. Small boys dream of being the driver of a giant tractor trailer that towers over the family car, or of piloting a ship, or (most of all in my day) of being a railroad engineer. Three portraits of people at work in these professions are the core of this new collection, which includes several shorter pieces also related to transportation: one about a pond in France where sea captains pay $15,000 for a weeklong ship-handling course using scale models, one retracing Thoreau’s canoe journey on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers and one about the innards of United Parcel Service.

The decisive Day is come

Or so Abigail Adams wrote to husband John the day after the Battle of Bunker Hill, which was fought on this date in 1775. The first major battle of the American Revolutionary War, it was fought more than a year before the Declaration of Independence.

After the action at Lexington and Concord in April (Paul Revere’s ride), the reinforced British were camped in Boston. The Massachusetts Committee of Safety decided to contain the British by occupying the heights of Charlestown north of Boston (and Dorchester south of it). The militiamen, however, did not have artillery to defend the heights once occupied.

By the morning of June 17, some 1,200 Americans were entrenched on Breed’s Hill in Charlestown — not Bunker Hill, which would have been a better choice. Reinforcements increased the number to 1,500 by afternoon. They were bombarded by British cannon shooting uphill and without much effect. Some 2,200 British troops attacked the fortified position around 3:30 — uphill, carrying 125 pound knapsacks. The first two assaults were thrown back, but the third succeeded as American gun powder ran out.

Though the British took the hill, they suffered more than 1,000 casualties — “The dead lay as thick as sheep in a fold.” American losses were less than 500.

The Battle of Bunker Hill encouraged the colonies. It proved that American forces could inflict heavy losses on the British.

An American officer, William Prescott, is said to have ordered during the battle, “Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes.”

The Massachusetts Historical Society has an excellent web site relating to the Battle of Bunker Hill.

Beginning of ‘Watergate’

Five men, one of whom said he is a former employee of the Central Intelligence Agency, were arrested at 2:30 a.m. [on this date in 1972] in what authorities described as an elaborate plot to bug the offices of the Democratic National Committee here.

Three of the men were native-born Cubans and another was said to have trained Cuban exiles for guerrilla activity after the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion.

They were surprised at gunpoint by three plain-clothes officers of the metropolitan police department in a sixth floor office at the plush Watergate, 2600 Virginia Ave., NW, where the Democratic National Committee occupies the entire floor.

There was no immediate explanation as to why the five suspects would want to bug the Democratic National Committee offices or whether or not they were working for any other individuals or organizations.

The Washington Post