Double-lottery Winner Counting His Millions

Third time lucky? You have to like his chances.

A Missouri man has won a million dollars in the lottery twice — three times, actually, since his second win was $2 million.

Ernest Pullen, a 57-year-old retired telecom employee and military man from Bonne Terre, Mo., won big in two different lottery events in his home state. In June, he won just a $1 million prize as part of a "100 Million Dollar Blockbuster" promotion run on the Scratchers lottery system. In September, he won another Scratchers event, "Mega MONOPOLY," to the tune of $2 million. (Now that's a lot of hotels on Boardwalk!)

It's not surprising that Missouri Lottery officials can conclusively state that this occurrence is the first of its kind. A lottery official put the odds at winning merely $1 million at 1 in 2.28 million. Winning $2 million after winning $1 million? Infinity is not enough.

But what about the money? Surely the state government gets part of that $3 million in tax. Well, yes. In fact, the payout was reduced further because Pullen chose to receive his winnings as lump sums, rather than as annuities. The $1 million payment was chopped to $700,00 right away, and the $2 million prize was a mere $1.3 million. And that's taxed income, remember.

Still, a man's house is his castle, and Pullen plans to spend some of his winnings on fixing up his castle. He probably has enough to install a top-notch security system.

Now We're Ready for the Aliens

Some things make me sleep better at night. This just might be one of those things: As far as aliens are concerned, we (Planet Earth) may yet have a leader.

The cliche of alien beings landing on Earth and uttering words to the effect of "Take us to your leader" is a cliche for a reason: It's entirely possible. Yes, it is entirely plausible, possible, predictable, and lots of other words ending in -able or -ible that intelligent members of a non-Earth species who arrive on our home world and can somehow approximate language that we humans can understand will assume that we have a leader and, more to the point, ask to be ushered into the presence of that leader.

If that happens, we need to be ready. And now, it seems, we are.

The United Nations (did you know this?) has an Office for Outer Space Affairs. It even has a catchy acronym — UNOOSA. UNOOSA has a leader, Mazlan Othman of Malaysia. She's an astrophysicist, a fact that will no doubt come in handy during the first discussions with alien beings who land on Earth and want to do something other than liquefy our defense systems.

Look at her picture: Othman is a kindly sort. At 58, she's been around the block a time or two in terms of astronomical research. She knows the chances of meeting a representative of an alien species (and she knows the chances are slim). However, she also knows that with the advent of the Hubble Space Telescope, the James Webb Telescope, the International Space Station, and all manner of other hunks of scientifically enhanced metal orbiting Earth, humans' chances of detecting intelligent life anywhere other than most places on Earth are growing by leaps and bounds.

This is undoubtedly not news to the U.N. scientific advisory committees, which will hear Othman's case very soon. If they agree that she and her office are the ones who should be put forward for a First Contact tete-a-tete, then (barring a no vote by the General Assembly), that is exactly what will happen.

Nightmares of alien overlords ruling the world? What nightmares of alien overlords ruling the world? We have a leader (or at least we will soon).

Love Killed the Social Media Star

Proving once again that too much of a good thing can be bad, workers at a library in Australia are reporting a horticultural case of death by Facebook.

Seems the Queensland state library hooked up a plant to a watering device, added in some electrical designs, threw in a bit of social media, and there they were.

Meet Eater, as the plant has come to be known, issued a call for fans and Wall posts on Facebook. Anytime someone went to the page and wrote something on the Meet Eater's Wall, the plant got a squirt of water.

Better yet (or worse yet, depending on how much you know the rest of the story), each time a person Liked the plant, the water rations went up.

Well, the plant proved pretty popular and so many Likes made so much more water trickle into the plant's container and before you could say "Man the lifeboats," the plant was waterlogged. Library officials report that the plant has "died" twice.

Turns out you can get a lot of water if you get 5,000 Likes. Surely these people were thinking they were doing the right thing, giving water to what was surely a plant that needed some attention, other than the kind brought on by the apparatus invading the plant's container in the name of a social media experiment.

But the writing should have been on the Wall when the number of Likes started to skyrocket. Still, the people looking after the poor plant say it's all part of their experiment.

Also part of their experiment is the opportunity to get up close and personal with the plant. See, the plant is the real thing, not just some virtual center of attention. If you happen to be in the neighborhood of the Queensland state library (and you'd be in Australia, of course), you can stop in and give the plant some real-world TLC. Organizers of the project have set up certain sound effects to reflect activity, including a sort of crooning sound that results from contact between the plant and green thumbs and a full-on crying suite triggered by the plant's being abandoned for more than a certain amount of time.

Somewhere, Akihiro Yokoi is smiling.

Star Girl Pitcher Has Little Leaguers Knuckling Under

My wife likes to tell this story about a high school female friend of hers who routinely beat the male swimmers at local meets and how the parents of the boys would complain to the girl's coach about letting her swim with the boys. The coach was unimpressed with the mothers' arguments, especially because their sons had just been beaten to the wall — by a girl.

I wonder if similar stories have been told in the past few years in houses in and around Plant City, Fla., about the feats of one Chelsea Baker, the only girl on the Brandon Farms Little League baseball team and indeed the only girl in the league.

Seems Chelsea can throw a knuckleball, which might provide a bit of explanation for her 12-0 record this year. In 60 innings, she struck out 127 batters. In the past two years, she has pitched two perfect games.

Yes, she can throw the knuckleball, which she learned from famed Major Leaguer Joe Niekro. But Chelsea has a hummer of a fastball, too. She can top 65 mph. That knuckleball comes in at about that speed as well.

What's a Little League batter to do?

Chelsea hasn't lost a sanctioned baseball game in four years on the mound. One of those perfect games was in an All-Star game.

The team finished this season with a record of 29-1. That one loss was in the sectional round of the Little League World Series, so Chelsea hit the all-star circuit herself, playing with a national all-girls dream team called the Sparks.

Seems Chelsea is also a bit handy with the bat. She's the owner of two grand slams.

The honors have been coming thick and fast recently. She's been the subject of a story on ESPN and in Sports Illustrated.

The Baseball Hall of Fame called not too long ago, wanting her jersey to hang in its rafters. Doesn't get much bigger than that.

Chelsea is also the holder of a 4.0 grade point average at her middle school.

Check out this video to see a wonderful feature on Chelsea, including some slow-motion shots of her picture-perfect pitch delivery.

And don't miss the bit where the boy who just struck out at the hands of a girl starts to cry. Remember, "there's no crying in baseball."

Pop-Tarts World: a True Destination

I am so there.

I'm counting the pennies now so I can book my ticket to NYC and frequent Pop-Tarts World.

This is such a great idea!

Where else but Times Square would such a place be? (OK, maybe Las Vegas, but they don't have one yet.)

So Pop-Tarts World is now open. Here's the deal: You go in, order all manner of Pop-Tarts-filled items and then chow down.

First of all, you can get your standard fill of the pastry goodness, the traditional Pop-Tarts, in a massive variety of flavors. You can get them toasted (the old reliable). You can get them frozen (Don't knock it till you try it!). You can get them at room temperature (with a little butter, perhaps?)

You can get them as sushi.

Yep, it's the idea, not the product. No seafood products to be found therein, although you could be forgiven for thinking so by looking at it. It's actually crumbled up Pop-Tarts inside a strip of rolled up fruit.

Want your Pop-Tarts frosted? No problem. Want them unfrosted? Again, no problem.

Want to get a bunch, served by a robot? Once again, no problem, with the Varietizer, a giant machine that lets you choose up to six flavors and then, using a robotic arm, delivers the boxes to your waiting little hands (provided that you've paid, of course).

Among the nontraditional yet yummy options on offer:

• Snickerdoodle cookies
  
• Chunky chocolate chippers
  
• Peach blueberry cobbler
  
• S'More Stix
  
• Pop-Tarts trail mix

It's not all hot and warm, however. You can get cold offerings as well, including

• Apple pie a la mode
  
• Strawberry milkshake
  
• S'More Pa-lease
  
• Pop-Tarts Ice Cream Sammys
  

Like I said, count me in, big time. It's taking me back, and I'll want to go back.

Educating Rural Africa, One Kindle at a Time

An old problem has an update of a new solution: A former bigwig at Amazon has brought his company's e-reader into the forefront of the drive to provide more educational to the developing world. Specifically, Kindles are heading to Ghana.

David Risher, who used to be a senior vice-president at online retailing giant Amazon.com, has started Worldreader, a nonprofit dedicated to improving literacy in places where it can be hard to find. Among the startup ideas put forward by this startup is handing out Amazon's signature electronic-reading device, the Kindle, to children at schools in Accra, Ghana, in what the nonprofit hopes is a wider rollout across the country in the coming months.

This is certainly not an attempt to sell more Kindles, in Ghana or anywhere else; rather, the idea is to get students to read, using modern technology that can work in places where other modern technology might not.

Many rural African communities lack infrastructure for computers or even landline phones, but the people in many of these communities do have cellphones, which is where the Kindle comes in. This device runs on a GSM cellular network, so users can connect to a satellite network and update the contents of their e-reader (which is pre-loaded with lots of free books anyway).

Worldreader also discovered that the Kindles could be charged using specially designed solar chargers. Tests have revealed that charging a Kindle for one hour can result in a couple of weeks of use for the typical student.

This is very much in the vein of the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child), a program to bring computers to the developing world that aims, among other things, to produce low-cost computers with nontraditional power sources (such as a hand crank).

The OLPC made headlines recently by offering its laptops at less than $100 each. Worldreader, for now, is depending on its donors to subsidize the cost of the Kindles, meaning that the children of Ghana pay nothing for their new e-readers (except, of course, for the time spent learning how to use their fun new learning centers).

The first e-books on these Kindles are in English. The plan is to include texts in multiple languages in the not too distant future.

Miss Iowa Gets Last Laugh on Big-mouthed Baseball Player

"You do not talk smack to an Iowan."

That might be a catch-phrase before too long, especially in this age of lightning-fast viral media.

So here's a little story that has all kinds of happy endings, no matter where you happen to be. It begins as a sports story, morphs into a human-interest story with a touch of beauty pageant thrown in, and ends up being one big laugh.

Act One: the Sports Story
The Washington Nationals baseball team have had few bright spots this season. (Their won-loss record isn't the worst in the National League — that would be the Pittsburgh Pirates — but the Nationals aren't winning a whole lot this year.) One of those bright spots has been the arrival of pitcher Stephen Strasburg, who burst onto the scene a few months ago with several devastating performances in a row. Strasburg routinely throws 100 mph (which is in itself somewhat of an uncommon feat), he has great command of his pitches, and he isn't afraid of pressure or crowds. Trouble was, he was hurt.

So 40,000 people go along to see the Nationals play the Philadelphia Phillies and to see Strasburg pitch for the Nationals. But Strasburg was hurt and had to be pulled from the lineup at the last minute. So when the announcer said the name of the Nationals starting pitcher and it was Miguel Batista, the fans made their displeasure known with a showering of boos. Batista, a journeyman reliever pressed into a starting role, tried to make light of the boos by saying the equivalent of "The reaction doesn't bother me." He said, however, a lot more.

After the game, Batista had this to say: "Imagine if you are there to see Miss Universe and you end up having Miss Iowa — you might get those kind of boos."

Well, the game was being shown live on ESPN and broadcast across the country, which is how a friend of the reigning Miss Iowa saw the pitcher say the thing and how the friend called Miss Iowa while she (not the friend but Miss Iowa) was getting her hair done. This being the digital age, the call was actually a text message, but the friend was incensed. So, it turns out, was Miss Iowa, Katherine Connors.

Act Two: the Beauty Pageant
Through a series of events that could have been possibly only in the 24/7 wall-to-wall media culture in which we now live, Connors made it known to the Nationals that she was not amused at being unfavorably compared to Miss Universe. The baseball team, fearing bad publicity when the team already had a losing record, decided to do all it could to make everyone forget about the relief pitcher's ill-timed, poorly worded remark.

So the Batista called the Beauty, personally apologizing over the phone and also sending her flowers. Connors was admittedly touched by the gesture. She was also touched by the team's offer of throwing out the first pitch at a Nationals game. She accepted and brought her sash with her, wearing it over a baseball uniform while doing the first-pitch honors. And Connors, who had never played organized baseball, made a credible show of throwing the ball over the plate, which is something that some recent presidents haven't mastered. And who should be the catcher behind the plate for Miss Iowa's famous first pitch but Batista, the journeyman pitcher whose big mouth uttered the remark that touched off the minor furor in the first place.

Act Three: the Big Laugh
Now fast friends, Batista posed for pictures with Connors, who was sporting a special Miss Iowa baseball jersey. The two shared a few laughs and a few photographs and then went their merry ways. Their association isn't at an end, though. Seems that the Miss Iowa pageant has invited Batista to be a judge. Whether he accepts remains to be seen.

What also remains to be seen is what he wears. As a parting show, Connors had this to say: "I told him I can throw a pitch or two. The question is, can he walk in my bikini in high heels."