On Tuesday night, the 12-state Mega Millions lottery
offered an estimated $370 million
dollar jackpot, topping last year's record-setting $314
million Powerball prize.
And yet, you can go to every state
lottery site and find hundreds of thousands -- and sometimes millions -- of dollars in unclaimed prizes.
Michigan,
for example, has
three unclaimed quarter-million dollar prizes. A
$200,000 prize will go back to the Arizona state coffers if nobody claims it in a couple of weeks.
Another $200,000 ticket expires in Iowa next week.
The
New York Times
reports:The could-have-been club boasts a surprisingly
large roster, with dozens of hefty jackpots
left unclaimed around the country in
recent years. There was $14 million
in Illinois
in 2005. In 2002, $4.6 million
went wanting in
Massachusetts. That same year,
nobody stepped up to take $51.7 million
in Indiana -- apparently the largest forgone prize on
record.
Digital BillboardsYears ago, when I was a news director
in Nashville,
Tenn., I wanted to be able to display our station's
live radar sweep on a billboard near the interstate. The
Tennessee Department of Transportation told me it was against
the law to display moving images on a billboard. Now, billboards that display digital images are becoming commonplace -- and stirring up controversy.
The
Christian Science Monitor reports that the
feds are trying to find out if electronic billboards distract drivers:
The
Federal Highway Administration is putting $150,000 toward a study to try to settle the issue as
the century-old debate over billboard ethics moves from one of highway
beauty to one of highway safety.
"Clearly,
today's technologically savvy drivers ... might drive by such things, unfazed, thinking 'It's a big TV on a stick. Who cares?' " says Doug Hecox, a
spokesman for the Federal Highway
Administration. "But whether the risks are the same across all age groups is unknown."
For now,
the FHWA provides only cursory guidelines on electronic billboards, leaving states and municipalities to decide whether or not they should be permitted, Mr.
Hecox says.
For guidance,
most planners look to a 1996 FHWA ruling that
permitted "tri-view" signs -- mechanical signs where triangular panels turn over to display new images
every few seconds. No state allows moving images on highway billboards.
However, regulations are generally more lax for "on-premises"
signs, like those located on the grounds of car [dealerships] and sporting arenas,
that can show video clips and animation -- even if they are located next to interstates.
According to the
CSM story, advertising spending on outdoor displays is rising second only to sales of online advertising. But even though
big electronic
billboards appear to be the wave of the future, they might be dangerous. The
CSM story says:
The billboards are designed to distract. A study on driver behavior released by the
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration last April showed that distractions in which a driver spent more than two
seconds looking elsewhere than the road contributed to 22 percent of
overall accidents.
"People need to know these enormous TV sets are going to pop up along highways. ... It's going to be a significant safety issue for the country,"
says Kevin Fry, president of
Scenic America, a group in Washington that lobbies to keep highways clear of clutter.
For its part, the [
Outdoor Advertising Association of America] cites a 2004 study by the
Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, indicating that driver behavior doesn't change measurably in the presence of attention-getting billboards.
Many experts, too, doubt whether the new billboards will stand out.
"These electronic billboards create no more of a
traffic safety hazard than a vinyl-wrap board with a stationary image," says
Alan Weinstein,
a land-use expert at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law in Cleveland.
Obesity Surgery Triples Among TeensThe Associated Press reports:The number of U.S. children
having obesity
surgery has tripled in
recent years, surging at a pace that could
mean more than 1,000 such operations this
year, new research suggests.
While the procedure is still far more common in adults, it appears to be slightly less risky in teens, according to an analysis of data on 12- to
19-year-olds who had obesity surgery from 1996 through 2003.
During that time, an estimated 2,744 youngsters nationwide had the operations. The pace tripled between 2000 and 2003,
reaching 771 surgeries that year, the study found.
Al's Morning MultimediaHoly
cow! You should see what
Florida Today is doing with
Little League baseball coverage online -- from video to "Big Play" photos. The Web site is also collecting photos and video from readers. This site
covers Little League with
the kind of intensity usually reserved for
college or pro teams.
We are always looking for your great ideas. Send Al a few sentences and hot links.
Editor's
Note: Al's Morning Meeting is a compendium of ideas, edited story
excerpts and other materials from a variety of Web sites, as well as
original concepts and analysis. When the information comes directly
from another source, it will be attributed and a link will be provided
whenever possible. The column is fact-checked, but depends upon the
accuracy and integrity of the original sources cited. Errors and
inaccuracies found will be corrected.
