Overnight Briefing & General Reality Check - Feb 1, 2018

Super Bowl betting:

The governors of Massachusetts and Pennsylvania --home to both of the upcoming Super Bowl teams-- have announced a bet on Sunday's big game:
--Should the Eagles upset the Patriots, MA Gov. CHARLIE BAKER will be sending some clam chowder from Legal Sea Foods in Boston; Craisins from Ocean Spray in Middleborough; apple cider donuts from Smolak Farms in North Andover; apple pie, chicken pot pie and maple syrup from Hollis Hills Farms in Fitchburg; Grillo's Pickles from Needham; and Boston Crème pie cupcakes and lemon squares from theKoffee Kup Bakery in Springfield down South.
--In return, if the Patriots win, PA Gov. TOM WOLF will send some Federal Donuts; soup from the Rooster Soup Company; Reading Terminal Market scrapple; coffee from La Colombe in Philadelphia; along with pizza slices from Rosa's Fresh Pizza up Northward.
But don't think the winning politicians will be chowing down on the goodies --they've agreed to donate the winnings to a local food pantry of their choice.

In other betting news, the states' zoos are also edging up to the betting booth, with BizJournals.com reporting six zoos --three in each state-- will be wagering money on the game, and the losing zoo's CEO will have to dress in the winning team's jersey and clean an animal exhibit as well as donating $1,000 each to a mission-centric program of the winning zoo's choice.

Human Nature:

If you want to find out who your true friends are, just sit down and channel surf with them. LiveScience says a new study found that close friends react to spontaneous stimuli, such as TV channels flicking by, with remarkably similar thought processes. Researchers also found that they could accurately predict how close two people were based solely on their brain activity in response to a series of unfamiliar video clips. Using brain imaging, the researchers found that close friends showed remarkably similar reactions in brain regions associated with emotion, attention and high-level reasoning. Even when the researchers controlled for other similarities --including the participants' age, gender, and ethnicity-- friendship still proved a reliable indicator of comparable neural activity (Bartha)

Good luck:

A guy in Maryland won the exact same amount twice in the same lottery game.
53-year-old EARL SUMMERS of Brunswick says he purchased two lottery tickets from Jerry's Liquors exactly two months apart. Both times he won a $50-thousand-dollar jackpot. Summers says, "I must be the luckiest man in the world. This is just unbelievable." He says he had his wife verify the second ticket to make sure he wasn't imagining things. (Still)