In a stroke of genius during these tough economic times, a couple in Maryland has decided to raffle off their home.  Stuck with a mortgage they can’t afford and a market that is less than forgiving, necessity sure proved the mother of invention.  Knowing the house would fetch nowhere near the appraised value of $1.3 million, this enterprising couple instead decided to sell raffle tickets at $50 a pop, hoping that the cumulative amount sold would cover the value of the home.  The winner of the raffle is slated to receive a 6,000 sq. ft. custom house with six bedrooms, 4.5 baths and two kitchens on a two acre lot.  And, most importantly, the winner will receive the house mortgage free and will not be on the hook for any administrative costs (closing, etc.).  Think about that.  A $50 ticket can buy you a very nice house in what appears to be a perfectly nice suburb that is within shouting distance of the beach and located just outside of the U.S. Naval Academy home of Annapolis (a 30-45 minute drive to DC).  And your odds are much, much better than, say, winning your state lottery jackpot.  Plus, since the couple is required to partner with a charity in order for the raffle to be deemed legal, you can rest easy in the knowledge that all funds received above and beyond the value of the home will be given to the charity.  Another couple in Maryland did the same thing a while back and the charity they worked with received $214,000.  Not too shabby!

So far, roughly 22,000 tickets have already been sold.  The original plan was to sell 31,500 and hold the raffle on December 31st.  However, the couple has decided to reduce the target amount to just 27,000 and has also pushed the raffle date back to January 23rd.  So there’s still time!  Sure, maybe you don’t want to actually live in Maryland, but at the very least you can own an investment property whose upside optionality is off the charts (given the ridiculously low premium paid). 

To learn more about this house, visit their website: http://www.fiftydollarhouse.com/. 

You can also read a recent NY Times piece on the practice of real estate raffles.

I’m watching a reality show called Trauma: Life in the ER and there’s a guy who was brought in with a meat grinder attached to his hand.  A butcher shop employee, it appears he reached his hand into the grinder to retrieve something, thinking the slow-moving contraption wouldn’t have time to snag him.  Unfortunately, the poor guy was sorely mistaken.  Now the doctors, with help from the hospital’s maintenance crew, are using a wrench to send the gears in reverse, which will hopefully spit out the dude’s finger.  My guess is it emerges a crumpled, mangled mess.  In any event, you should think about this poor guy the next time you complain about your job!

Update – Miraculously, the finger emerged unbroken(!) and only required a few stitches to fix.  Lucky dog.

There was a fun piece in today’s Washington Post that explores the culture of ineptitude and inaction that plagued the Occupational Safety and Health Administration under the reign of W.

My favorite part:

In 2006, [director] Henshaw was replaced by Edwin G. Foulke Jr., a South Carolina lawyer and former Bush fundraiser who spent years defending companies cited by OSHA for safety and health violations.

Foulke quickly acquired a reputation inside the Labor Department as a man who literally fell asleep on the job: Eyewitnesses said they saw him suddenly doze off at staff meetings, during teleconferences, in one-on-one briefings, at retreats involving senior deputies, on the dais at a conference in Europe, at an award ceremony for a corporation and during an interview with a candidate for deputy regional administrator.

His top aides said they rustled papers, wore attention-getting garb, pounded the table for emphasis or gently kicked his leg, all to keep him awake. But, if these tactics failed, sometimes they just continued talking as if he were awake. “We’ll be sitting there and things will fall out of his hands; people will go on talking like nothing ever happened,” said a career official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to a reporter.

In an interview, Foulke denied falling asleep at work, although he said he was often tired and sometimes listened with his eyes closed.

There are two things that stand out in the above passage.  First, I can relate to the wonderful awkwardness the arises when people sitting across from you in a meeting choose to get some shuteye while you speak.  This has happened to me on too many occasions during my career (the Japanese are particularly notorious for dozing off at inopportune times), and I marvel at each occurrence.  Seriously, how could anyone consider such behavior to be acceptable?  Never in my life would I imagine falling asleep in a meeting.  Even if I was so tired I needed to sit on a tack to keep my wits about me, I would NEVER fall asleep in a meeting.  Plain and simple.

Second, I love the guy’s horribly lame attempt at glossing over the fact that he was thinking horizontal while attempting to remain vertical during meetings.  “…he was often tired and sometimes listened with his eyes closed.”  Did he really think that would fly as an excuse?  Even if he were awake, what makes the act of listening with one’s eyes closed any more normal?  During my next meeting, I’m going to clap randomly when someone else is speaking.  So long as I’m still listening, it’s all good, right?

I absolutely love stuff like this:

Teenagers who pledge to remain virgins until marriage are just as likely to have premarital sex as those who do not promise abstinence and are significantly less likely to use condoms and other forms of birth control when they do, according to a study released today.