That’s the way I remember it. The only time I play the lottery is when powerball exceeds $500 million I buy a “just in case” ticket. It always confirms my “luck” with not one correct number.
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I agree with you on this. The thing is that if you gamble $200 million to win $300 million, you can deduct $200 million and only pay taxes on $100 million. The thing is that most people who play lots of money in the lottery don’t look at things that way as well all know.
Yeah, I buy a “just in case” ticket sometimes as well and am always reminded that the odds are against me.
Shouldn’t you report gambling subsidized cheap food as income? How about direct benefit work where you don’t get paid by a second party? When you mow the grass in your yard, should you charge yourself a “fair price” for the work, pay sales tax on the labor, and then report the amount you paid yourself as income?
I think we’ll all have overgrown lawns if it ever comes to that.
@B.L.E I had a former colleague who subscribed to the Wall Street Journal. He would bring it to work each day and rent the paper for 2¢ an hour to anyone who wanted to read it. He would keep track of his earnings from the paper and report it on his income tax.
Now I’ve heard everything. But I used to get the WSJ and I suspect the real reason was that then he could use the garbage at work instead of filling up his own trash can. Getting that thing in the mail every day really loaded up my recycling bin. Ever heard the story of the guy stealing wheelbarrows?
@bing This colleague who rented out the Wall Street Journal had a weird sense of humour. He was a single man. The fall that he started teaching at our institution, he had a shell on the back of his pickup truck and he slept there at night with the truck parked in the parking lot. In the early morning he would come in and clean up and shave in the restroom. He didn’t rent a room until the first snow fall. Everyone thought he was cheap and he wasn’t very well liked. However, I encountered him at the grocery store one evening and he had two grocery carts of food. I asked him how he could eat all that food. He replied, “This isn’t for me. I’m putting together Christmas baskets. One needs to take of one’s own”. I found out later he came from a very poor family a couple of states away and he did what he could to help them. Also, he would never teach summer courses. Each summer he would take different nephews and take them on cross-country camping trips so these nephews could see a different part of the nation.
Not that unusual.
I’d love one of those to hit loud motorcycles. It’s amazing sometimes, 50 cars on the road and one bike, and the bike exhaust noise drowns out the 50 cars.
apologies to bikers who keep their mufflers legal…
Yeah I don’t think its unusual. Maybe sleeping in the truck but not the taking care of family part. I have a double PhD friend originally from Egypt and lives very frugally. But he sends money home every month to Egypt and has put his two nephews through college and med school. It’s just part of the creed I guess.
I know of no Harley or Indian riders who have legal exhausts.
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I was sitting in an outdoor café in Boston one day when two bikers who were parked on the street with their mufflers pointed at me started their engines. And stood chatting while they idled and poured exhaust gas in my face.
I got up to ask them to move on, and they reved their engines up and remained in place for about 5 minutes…
That plus loud bikes riding by in the middle of the night adds up to a dislike of bikers. Yet I worked with several, great guys. Again, apologies to bikers who keep their mufflers legal…
I would think an open exhaust bike would be damaging for the biker. I wear hearing protection when I use my push type mower.
I think the loud Harley thing is overblown. As someone who owns and has owned Harleys, almost all had legal exhaust systems. The vast majority of close and casual friends who own Harleys have stock exhaust systems.
Someone sees and hears a few obnoxiously loud (and I don’t like it either, but…) Harleys and make a blanket condemnation.
Funny thing. I live near (and used to live in…) a small city with an AFB. Over the years I’ve seen letters to the editor in the local newspaper complaining about loud Harleys and demanding the city do something about them.
After researching the complainees I see they have addresses right under the flight pattern at the base.
So usually all day long and quite often until late night they listen to howling T6 Texans, T-38s under full afterburner, and an assortment of visitors including F-16s, F-15s, C-17s, C-130s,and the random C-5 Galaxy. An F-15 under full burner shakes everything for miles around and can also be heard 10 miles away. This they can accept, but not a bike passing through.
I’ve been at my mother in law’s house when a C-5 passed over at about 800 feet and the entire house was quivering. The pilots frequently do formation aerobatics and so on right above my house. Doesn’t bother me a bit.
I find it odd that some people can be offended by a few minutes of cycle pipes but can sit nonchalantly through vastly louder aircraft from early in the morning until sometimes midnight or later and not complain.
Again, I don’t like extremely noisy pipes on a bike either.
When I was a kid, my neighbor friend loved to run his go kart or mini bike with a straight pipe on the B&S or Clinton engine. You could hear him for half a mile and so could the Police. I always like the quiet tone instead.
I’m fine with a Harley with a legal exhaust. I’m fine with a bit of the baffle short-sawed. I like bikes.
But I am NOT fine with these clowns with the open pipes. There’s no reason to be making that much noise. For the record, I wasn’t too impressed by the Kid I was behind in the Subaru today with the almost open pipes. He was making a racket, and there’s no need for that.
Having lived on bases with B52s, KC135s, and fighters (I cannot remember what we had) and worked the flightline days, I don’t even notice aircraft anymore. Except for those SR71s they were flying from Okie. Huge sound, especially when they lit the burners, beautiful aircraft.
Apology accepted.
When people ask me why I never put an aftermarket exhaust on my bike, I tell them “I want my people to use all five fingers when they wave at me”.
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Park and rides may not be safe either,
"A naked carjacker was fatally shot Tuesday by law enforcement officers in Johnson Creek, the Waukesha County sheriff said.
The man was shot after a lengthy pursuit that began shortly after 12:30 p.m. at the Meadowbrook park and ride lot, W265 N2693 Meadowbrook Road in Waukesha, Waukesha County Sheriff Eric Severson said.
According to Severson, a man carjacked a motorist at the lot before removing his clothing and fleeing in the vehicle.
A City of Delafield police officer spotted the vehicle on westbound I-94, where the driver exited at Highway 83 before making a U-turn and getting back on I-94.
The pursuit entered Jefferson County, where the vehicle’s tires were deflated by stop-sticks, Severson said."
I’m guessing this carjacker was high on some kind of substances . . . legal or illegal, I have no idea . . . or had a serious mental situation
Or maybe the car he stole didn’t have working ac 
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Actually, I read that as he forced the motorist to remove his clothing. Typical vague news report…
@the_same_mountainbike, I’m not a fan of Harleys or any other bike with open pipes. To each their own is the way I look at it though as I don’t agonize over hearing one. To me it not only attracts attention of the motoring public, it also attracts cops.
I never get enough of listening to and watching aircraft. Sometimes I go out to the base and on the north end there is a public dirt road. One can park there and at that point the T-38s are about 125 feet above you. Really cool when the wind is out of the north and they pass over in full burner.
To keep it car related, that’s what one of the jets was doing some years ago when it suffered a turbine explosion and the control surfaces locked. Both pilots ejected and the plane hit 1/4 mile from the shop door of the Nissan dealer where I worked. The plane was in a sharp left bank at the time things went south and just rolled in nose first. A degree difference in the angle and it likely would have plowed into us.
Wal Mart was under construction at the time and the guys on scaffold laying brick thought they were dead meat. They were leaping from 15 feet up and never missing a step after hitting the ground.
The wind was howling out of the north at 40 MPH so we watched the pilots drift forever in their chutes. One landed 1/2 mile south in a field and the other 1.5 miles where he got tangled up on a utility pole.
Through sheer luck. there was a 300 foot wide open area and the plane hit that. No injuries except one elderly lady whose patio door was blown in and set her bathrobe on fire. Four houses did burn after being ignited by burning debris.