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Gambling and Worcester
Mayor Konnie Lukes:

“I’ve never been impressed by the expectations of loads of money being made by casinos,” Ms. Lukes said. “It’s my understanding from previous research that the more casinos there are in a geographic area, the less profits and less revenue generated.

“Gambling is one of those industries that doesn’t produce a product, doesn’t produce any skilled labor positions and just redistributes income,” she said. “It’s sort of an admission that everything else is hopeless.”

You know, I’d say the same thing about Wal-Mart.

A stinkier durian
Seth Godin:

Will stinkless durian revolutionize the marketplace? Possibly. I’ve been wrong before. But if I were a durian farmer, I’d work hard to make durian stinkier.

Bye, Larry
Larry Gottlieb, who I’ve had the pleasure of dealing with a time or two, is leaving his job at Worcester’s Community Healthlink and taking a similar position in Lexington, MA. This T&G article about the move is notable because:

1. The first sentence gets across the most-notable point: he’s leaving.
2. The last sentence has the second-most-notable point: he played pro basketball in Israel!

The T&G needs to get its priorities straight.

Worcester webcams
There’s one at Holy Cross.

Lynne Simonds and PILOT
Some interesting comments from City Council candidate Lynne Simonds, mostly about PILOT, the proposed scheme to tax Worcester non-profits:

Here’s a story: Why do we need another $500,000 to market the city? We don’t need to bring people here. We need to satisfy the people here and then other people will come. It has to be inside out.

Dioramarama
There’s now some decent photos of the Happy Birthday Mike Leslie “Dioramarama.”

Diorama of Jacob Berendes

Perpetual Motion Roadshow ends
I think I only saw one installment of the Roadshow, in LA, but I followed the adventures of this indie tour on and off for years—because frankly, I’ve always fantasized about “going on tour” myself. Mastermind Jim Munroe shares Ten Lessons from the Roadshow. (Allow me to highly recommend Munroe’s novel Everyone In Silico.)

The high cost of low price, the low price of free beer
There’s a $5 screening of the Wal-Mart movie tonight at 7pm at Ralph’s. One friend says she thinks $5 is a little steep for admission, so to sweeten the deal here’s the arrangement: if I’ve never met you, and you come up to me at this screening and say, “I heard you would buy me a beer,” I’ll buy you a beer. Open to the first two or three applicants, depending on how much cash I have with me.

Glenn Greenwald:

It is actually difficult to fathom what historians are even going to be able to say when they compile the statements and representations of our country’s political leaders over the past four years. It all reads like some caricatured cartoon of a country ruled by compulsive liars and two-bit cons — like some college freshman’s attempt to write a science fiction account of a country ruled by leaders who continuously manipulate the citizenry with the most unabashed, simplistic and transparent lies on the gravest of matters.

Via Oh-la-la: