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No school today for the kids. They have seven free hours with which to shovel us out. It shouldn't be too bad. There's four of them, ages 13 to 8, plus little Meg (almost 6). I have shovels for all of them. Plus, we kept the driveway shoveled out all day yesterday. As of 8:00 last night, it was clear. It ain't clear no more, but it could be a lot worse.

Great memorial day today: Saints Cyril and Methodius. Disciple to the Slavs. So dedicated were they in missionary activities, they devised a new alphabet to spread the word to the Slav barbarians in the ninth century. They seeded the land whose crop would be fought over by the RCC and Eastern Orthodox Church for centuries, and later by the Muslims and even atheists (the Commies). That's unfortunate, but their work was good and impressive.

I'm reading Eric Schlosser's Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market, an impulse buy six weeks ago. I like it so far, though it's definitely written in the muckraking tradition, telling only one side of the story. It's kind of like a legal brief: truthful, I'm sure, but not pointing out flaws in its own argument. Anyway, during a description of life at Leavenworth prison, he mentions in passing that a riot broke out while the inmates were watching Silence of the Lambs. What the? Why are inmates at a high-security facility watching a movie about murder and cannibalism? It's quite a far cry from the old Auburn prison system in the 19th century, where prisoners spent their first six months or so in solitary confinement, with nothing but the Bible to read.

Sad story: A man with cancer and one year to live wins the state lottery. The prize: $1 million, paid over 20 years at the rate of $50,000 a year. But he wants a lump sum, in order to pay for specialized cancer treatment that will prolong his life but not cure him. The cost is $400,000. He can take the lump sum payment, but that's only $400,000, and he'll have only $200,000 left after taxes.

If the fella is reading this, my advice: Go see an attorney. A couple of potential easy solutions that the attorney might be able to figure out: Get a bank loan for $400,000, pledging the installments as collateral (if allowed by NY), or maybe see if the treatment center will take a pledge of installments in lieu of up front payment. Alternatively, take the lump sum and don't pay the taxes. New York will probably insist on withholding the state income taxes, but hopefully it'd let you take the federal portion, which would leave you with about $380,000. It'll take the feds at least three years to make your life rough, at which point you might not be living any more, and if you are, the IRS will probably leave you alone if you don't have long to live. The IRS will have a claim against your estate, but you have no wife or children to worry about, so who cares.

Reminds me of an old joke: "Hey, did you hear Poland has a new million-dollar lottery? The winner gets a dollar a year for a million years." (Don't get your shorts in a bunch because I told a Polish joke. I understand that it's kinda sad the way Polish people have been humiliated for decades by Polish jokes. I would've substituted "Hittite," but no one would get it, plus that's not the way I heard the joke twenty years ago.)

Humorous headline at Drudge: Hearing on Warming of Planet Cancelled Because of Ice Storm.

Happy Valentine's Day, everybody. Celebrate it. It's not a phony holiday (Sweetest Day is phony, VD is real).

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