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Once again, Jon Stewart appears to be the most lucid of us all.

Far be it from me to advocate gambling. I'm too broke to enjoy it, and every time I've been to one of the gambling towns in the mountains here (Seriously, even restaurants have slots in these places) I've been bored out of my mind. I respond badly to partial reinforcement. I'm also aware that I am really ******** weird in the respect, since most people respond to it right quick, many of those as economically challenged as me. People do indeed get addicted to gambling, and it's easy to run scams on the internet (Believe me, I know. Boy do I know). Flushing one's money down the toilet should not go unchecked. But-- there's always a but-- perhaps going so far overboard is not helpful.

Caution's all well and good, but there is a demonstrable difference between a free site where playing kids' flash games can get you tickets and a site that requires real money and exists to make a profit off people who cannot possibly beat the house. The link here is that you can donate to Gaia, get letters, sell or trade the letters for tokens, and then play games in the now-defunct casino. Aside from being a pretty weak link, it kinda skips over the fact that you can also play the games without ever having spent a real cent on Gaia. The old "reasonable man" argument looks at that and laughs itself sick.

Do I think Gaia promotes gambling? No. Do I think anyone would seriously develop a gambling addiction because of Gold Mountain? No, not unless they already had a lot of other, more serious problems, and even then it wouldn't be all Gaia's fault. Do I think this corrupt minors? No. Do I think these are just games inspired by Chuck E. Cheese type "win tickets, get stuff" systems? Yes. Am I a little irritated that eBay, owner of PayPal, is taking the piss out of us even though they can't bother to follow their own Terms of Usage? Yeah, you bet your a**.

Something I once said to an elderly couple when I was working at a restaurant (There was a mother seated a few tables away actually encouraging her child to scream. Yeah. That's why waiters all smoke) comes to mind here: "Common sense generally isn't." Exercising a little judgement and self-control would have been a much better idea here, but no, no one's bothered yet again. Three cheers, now I'm going to run off to Fiji for my sanity's sake.