Bruteful Butt(e) County

The Good News is that it's cheap to live up here. The Bad News, there are reasons for that. Among them, it's hot as Hell (more a redundancy than a comparison). Nothing– and I mean NOTHING== works properly here. Butte college is a joke. An embarrassment. They outfit a football team (an enormous hemorrhaging of funds unless you happen to be University of Texas, and make millions off of television contracts. Butt(e) College's team is called the Roadpeckers or something…). Outfitting one or two players costs enough to properly outfit a computer lab for an entire year— and the school does not even have a SINGLE ONE, so outfitted (a criminally stupid misallocation of resources in MY view)! The campus itself is literally out in the middle of nowhere (zoom out for an even more unbelievable view), there are absolutelyNO regular transit buses serving the site, so students NOT owning automobiles (and they are legion) are forced to rely on the most unbelievably erratic group of shuttle buses ever to inexplicably find themselves on the same continent– much less the same county! The computer system is entirely unnavigable, I've only asked one administrative person who has be able to even answer ONE question successfully (or even try). …

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Holiday in Cambodia

South Korean Developer Courts Harrah’s for Casino at Cambodia’s Angkor Wat
By Daniel Ten Kate – Jul 29, 2010

South Korean developer Intercity Group plans to start construction in October on a $400 million casino resort complex near Cambodia’s Angkor Wat temples that aims to draw high rollers from Macau and Singapore.

Harrah’s Entertainment Inc., the world’s biggest casino owner, and MGM Resorts International, the largest casino owner on the Las Vegas strip, are among companies that were invited to visit the site, James Cho, Intercity’s vice president, said in an interview. The first phase of the project, Cambodia’s largest casino to date, is set to finish in 2012, he said.

“All these big guys are interested in operation management deals,” said Cho, who holds a graduate degree from Columbia University. “We’re confident because the feasibility is there and gaming concessions in this region are so rare.”

Intercity is betting the casino complex, with an investment value equivalent to about 4 percent of Cambodia’s gross domestic product, will draw Asian gamblers looking for an alternative to more established gambling centers. Singapore opened Resorts World Sentosa in February and Marina Bay Sands in April, and Vietnam has approved a $4.2 billion casino set to open in 2013.

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Funding Challenge

Raising funds may prove difficult in the current financial climate given the project’s scale, which is bigger than most casinos outside Singapore and Macau, said Sean Monaghan, an industry expert who formerly worked as a gaming analyst at Merrill Lynch & Co. Success may hinge on showing investors ties to junket operators in Thailand and China, he said.

“Even though Siem Reap sounds goods, most of the people that go there aren’t really casino players,” Singapore-based Monaghan said. “You have to have a very, very solid team to pull that financing off.”

MGM representatives “accepted an invitation to meet and visit the site,” spokesman Gordon Absher said by e-mail. He declined further comment on the project.

Jacqueline Peterson, a spokeswoman for Las Vegas-based Harrah’s, didn’t immediately respond to an e-mail sent after regular office hours or answer a call to her mobile phone.

MGM doesn’t plan to invest its own money in the project, though may consider managing the casino for a fee, Cho said.

Intercity declined to reveal how much funding has been raised so far. The tourist draw of Angkor Wat, the 12th century Hindu temple, an international airport and “tons” of incentives from the government, including corporate tax holidays and low gaming levies, will make the project viable, Cho said.

“Not everybody’s going to gamble in Macau or Singapore,” Cho said. “Cambodia is family friendly and it’s cheaper.”

More at Businessweek.com



Next thing you know, they’ll be telling us they’re building a Wal-Mart at Teotehuacan!

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Workers put new roof on Wal-Mart store

Augie’s Cafe in Chico, CA

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Chico’s Only Profit for Non-Profit Cafe

Augie’s Mission:

Augie’s Fine Coffee & Tea serves the Chico community with superior coffee, tea and wholesome foods in a friendly and safe environment where quality, integrity, purity and simplicity prevail. Augie’s Inc. is a profit for non-profit corporation, giving all profits to Chico-based charities. Augie’s buys locally and keeps your money in Chico.

Integrity:

All our coffee and tea is Fair Trade and Organic, so the farmers are paid better and treat their workers and the earth in sustainable methods that make for a better product for you and a healthier world for all of us.

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www.augiescoffee.com/

Some charities supported by Augie’s include:

Habitat for Humanity of Butte County
Butte Humane Society
Big Brothers and Sisters
Rape Crisis
The Jesus Center

Serving meals, and providing showers
and other services to the Homeless

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more photos HERE, and MANY more to come…

Welcome to Chico

Just bought myself a new digital camera. Haven’t got the hang of it yet. It’s a FujiFilm (uh… something or other…), and I’m going to have to adjust my white balance (histogram) using GIMP (which I really haven’t got the hang of either)…

Benway

So I am assigned to engage the services of Doctor Benway for Islam Inc.

Dr. Benway had been called in as advisor to the Freeland Republic, a place given over to free love and continual bathing. The citizens are well adjusted, cooperative, honest, tolerant and above all clean. But the invoking of Benway indicates all is not well behind that hygienic façade: Benway is a manipulator and coordinator of symbol systems, an expert on all phases of interrogation, brainwashing and control. I have not seen Benway since his precipitate departure from Annexia, where his assignment had been T.D.– Total Demoralization. Benway’s first act was to abolish concentration camps, mass arrest and, except under certain limited and special circumstances, the use of torture.

“I deplore brutality,” he said. “It’s not efficient. On the other hand, prolonged mistreatment, short of physical violence, gives rise, when skillfully applied, to anxiety and a feeling of special guilt. A few rules or rather guiding principles are to be borne in mind. The subject must not realize that the mistreatment is a deliberate attack of an anti-human enemy on his personal identity. He must be made to feel that he deserves any treatment he receives because there is something (never specified) horribly wrong with him. The naked need of the control addicts must be decently covered by an arbitrary and intricate bureaucracy so that the subject cannot contact his enemy direct.”

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Why do Aliens Hate Radivoje Lajic?

Belgrade man’s house gets bombarded six times by meteorites

Radivoje Lajic first came to international attention in 2008, shortly after the fifth meteorite had crashed into the roof of his house in the northern village of Gornji Lajici.

And now, within the past month, another rock has hit the roof of his house, in defiance of all the odds – making it six strikes since the plague of meteorites began in 2007.

Experts at Belgrade University have confirmed that all the falling rocks he has handed over were meteorites. They are now trying to work out what exactly it is about his house that particularly attracts them. The strikes always happen when it is raining heavily, he says, never when there are clear skies.

Lajic has his own explanation, of course. After the fifth rock struck his house, he said: ‘I am obviously being targeted by extraterrestrials. I don’t know what I have done to annoy them but there is no other explanation that makes sense. The chance of being hit by a meteorite is so small that getting hit six times has to be deliberate.’

‘I have no doubt I am being targeted by aliens,’ he adds. ‘They are playing games with me. I don’t know why they are doing this.

No kidding!