Dear Attorney General Eric Schneiderman:
The Bettors of the State of New York and the employees of the remaining OTBs, public benefit corporations, have no standing to ask for your Opinion to the following simple questions with seemingly obvious answers::
1. Will the Attorney General defend the constitutionality of NY PML Sec 105?
2. Does NY PML Sec 105 apply to Nassau OTB?
3. Does NY PML Sec 105 violate the rights of New York Bettors secured by NY Const. Art. 1, Sec. 3?
4. Is NY PML Sec 105 vague, indefinite and/or overly broad as the term "Easter Sunday" does not define one and only one Sunday in all years (see eg Gregorian and Julian Calendars)? See article from the Wall Street Journal on Calendars below.
I hope that you will sua sponte issue an Opinion as to the above so that bettors may bet, workers may work or not as they wish, and the State and its subdivisions make money. There are tracks running all across the United States every day of the year that bettors want to bet. Track calendars may be found at eg www.ntra.com. The OTBs also sell New York Lottery tickets which are drawn every day of the year. The OTBs also cash non IRS Lottery tickets in cash for any sum, a convenience for many Lotto Players.
It is critical in these current time that the OTBs are open when customers want to bet. I believe that your Opinion will belatedly validate the actions of New York City OTB taken on the advice of its Counsel in 2003.
Sincerely yours,
The Bettors of the State of New York and the employees of the remaining OTBs, public benefit corporations, have no standing to ask for your Opinion to the following simple questions with seemingly obvious answers::
1. Will the Attorney General defend the constitutionality of NY PML Sec 105?
2. Does NY PML Sec 105 apply to Nassau OTB?
3. Does NY PML Sec 105 violate the rights of New York Bettors secured by NY Const. Art. 1, Sec. 3?
4. Is NY PML Sec 105 vague, indefinite and/or overly broad as the term "Easter Sunday" does not define one and only one Sunday in all years (see eg Gregorian and Julian Calendars)? See article from the Wall Street Journal on Calendars below.
I hope that you will sua sponte issue an Opinion as to the above so that bettors may bet, workers may work or not as they wish, and the State and its subdivisions make money. There are tracks running all across the United States every day of the year that bettors want to bet. Track calendars may be found at eg www.ntra.com. The OTBs also sell New York Lottery tickets which are drawn every day of the year. The OTBs also cash non IRS Lottery tickets in cash for any sum, a convenience for many Lotto Players.
It is critical in these current time that the OTBs are open when customers want to bet. I believe that your Opinion will belatedly validate the actions of New York City OTB taken on the advice of its Counsel in 2003.
Sincerely yours,
Open On 1st Palm Sunday, Otb Rakes In $2m - New York Daily News
articles.nydailynews.com/.../18220335_1_racing-and-wagering-boar...
Open On 1st Palm Sunday, Otb Rakes In $2m. BY JERRY BOSSERT DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITER. Monday, April 14, 2003. New York City Off-Track Betting ...
§ 105. Supplementary regulatory powers of the board. Notwithstanding
any inconsistent provision of law, the board through its rules and
regulations or in allotting dates for racing or in licensing race
meetings at which pari-mutuel betting is permitted shall be empowered
to: (i) permit racing at which pari-mutuel betting is conducted on any
or all dates from the first day of January through the thirty-first day
of December, inclusive of Sundays but exclusive of December twenty-fifth
and Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday; and (ii) fix minimum and maximum
charges for admission at any race meeting.
The Drama of Measuring the Days of Our Lives
· By CARL BIALIK
There was the Y2K computer-programming fiasco, as the world entered the year 2000. Then there are the seconds that have to be added to the clock occasionally—the next one is in June—to make our definition of a day match the ever-so-slight slowing of the Earth's rotation. And spare a thought for the Swedish couple who married 300 years ago but whose anniversary has never appeared on any calendar.
In the centuries since, society has improved its reckoning of time and synchronization of watches across borders. But it continues to use a relatively ancient system for tweaking time by adding leap days—such as next week's Feb. 29—that some astronomers say isn't the ideal mathematical solution to the problem that a year is a bit longer than 365 days. Add in the unpredictable variability in the length of years, and the calendar continues to defy simple computation.
The Numbers Guy blog:
Yet history is dotted with attempts to systematize calendars. The Julian calendar was named for Julius Caesar, who instituted it in 46 B.C. after recognizing that the time it takes for the Earth to orbit the sun isn't neatly divisible by the time it takes for the Earth to rotate about its axis.
Caesar added a leap year every four years, which was almost right. But the almost added up. Those extra leap days made the average year too long, shifting annual phenomena—such as the spring and autumn equinox—earlier than their normal seasonal dates by 10 days by 1582. Since the date of Easter is tied to the spring equinox, Pope Gregory XIII sought to overhaul the calendar, skipping 10 days and then removing three leap years every 400 years.
In Gregory's time, England had just emerged from a schism with the church and wasn't eager to follow papal authority. Enter John Dee—"variously listed as an astronomer, mathematician, magician and mystic; today one might even call him a crackpot," says Geoff Chester, a spokesman for the U.S. Naval Observatory, which plays a key role in counting world time today.
Associated Press
Petr Skala walking on a ledge Friday during his weekly maintenance of the famous astronomical clock in Prague, Czech Republic. The clock was first installed in 1410, making it the third-oldest astronomical clock in the world and possibly the oldest one still working.
The average year in the Gregorian system lasts exactly 365.2425 days, compared with the average year in the Dee system of a touch over 365.2424 days. The latter is closer to the actual time it takes the Earth to rotate around the sun, about 365.242 days, says Dr. Steel.
Still, Dee was ultimately unsuccessful, and most of the world eventually fell into line with a uniform calendar.
But that hasn't run out the clock on calendar problems. Another complication is that years are measured in days, and days are getting longer as tides create friction and slow the Earth's rotation. The length of the second has been fixed to the oscillation frequency of Cesium-133, using a duration that once corresponded to 1/86,400th of a day. But today—and tomorrow—are longer than the 86,400 seconds clocks world-wide include in a day by about one or two milliseconds—the gap changes daily.
To rectify that shift, the world's timekeepers have agreed to add so-called leap seconds whenever the drift nears a second, typically at midnight London time—the minute starting at 11:59 p.m. has 61 seconds.
As the day grows longer, somewhat unpredictably, there are fractionally fewer days in the year, and so eventually, in the very long run, today's calendar may need to be amended once more. But then, that should be expected, says Steve Allen, an astronomer at the University of California who maintains a website with research about the leap second.
"It is extraordinary hubris for any civilization to presume that its calendar will still be in use in 1,000 years," he says.
Learn more about this topic at WSJ.com/NumbersGuy. Email numbersguy@wsj.com.
Dolan not throwing in towel for Obama fight
Cardinal bashes President's health care plan as 'intruding into the life of faith'
Comments (25)By Vera Chinese, Eric Zerkel AND Alison Gendar / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Monday, April 9, 2012, 2:01 AM
Debbie Egan-Chin/New York Daily News
Cardinal Dolan delivers Easter mass on Sunday.
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Cardinal Timothy Dolan went on national TV on Easter Sunday to vow he will not back down from a fight over President Obama’s contraception policy.
Before heading to St. Patrick’s Cathedral to lead Easter Mass, Dolan went on “Face the Nation” to bash Obama’s health care plan as “intruding into the life of faith.”
Dolan said he didn’t relish jumping into political battles, but insisted he and other religious leaders were not going to meekly ignore what they see as a direct assault on religious liberty.
“We didn’t ask for the fight, but we’re not going to back away from it,” Dolan said about the Obama administration’s mandate that health insurance offered by religious institutions cover the cost of contraceptives for female employees.
Dolan said the President’s compromise — requiring insurance companies rather than the employers to pick up the tab — still left his church in “a very tough spot.”
“You’ve got a dramatic, radical intrusion of a government bureaucracy into the internal life of the church,” Dolan said.
Later, Dolan preached his first Easter Mass as a cardinal to a standing-room-only crowd at St. Pat’s.
“If you can’t be in Rome, if you can’t be in Jerusalem, this ain’t bad,” he told more than 3,000 parishioners.
“The pivotal question of life, Pope Benedict says, is whether Jesus is or was,” he said, explaining that the most influential person in his life is a living Christ.
Many parishioners came to the service from the Fifth Ave. Easter parade in flamboyant hats.
“This was the treat of a lifetime,” said Joan Patterson, 81, of Rhode Island, attending her first St. Pat’s Easter Mass with her sister, Miriam Patterson, who wore her late father’s hat to the service.
Before heading to St. Patrick’s Cathedral to lead Easter Mass, Dolan went on “Face the Nation” to bash Obama’s health care plan as “intruding into the life of faith.”
Dolan said he didn’t relish jumping into political battles, but insisted he and other religious leaders were not going to meekly ignore what they see as a direct assault on religious liberty.
“We didn’t ask for the fight, but we’re not going to back away from it,” Dolan said about the Obama administration’s mandate that health insurance offered by religious institutions cover the cost of contraceptives for female employees.
Dolan said the President’s compromise — requiring insurance companies rather than the employers to pick up the tab — still left his church in “a very tough spot.”
“You’ve got a dramatic, radical intrusion of a government bureaucracy into the internal life of the church,” Dolan said.
Later, Dolan preached his first Easter Mass as a cardinal to a standing-room-only crowd at St. Pat’s.
“If you can’t be in Rome, if you can’t be in Jerusalem, this ain’t bad,” he told more than 3,000 parishioners.
“The pivotal question of life, Pope Benedict says, is whether Jesus is or was,” he said, explaining that the most influential person in his life is a living Christ.
Many parishioners came to the service from the Fifth Ave. Easter parade in flamboyant hats.
“This was the treat of a lifetime,” said Joan Patterson, 81, of Rhode Island, attending her first St. Pat’s Easter Mass with her sister, Miriam Patterson, who wore her late father’s hat to the service.
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