Seven
Come Eleven!
 I heard
that one, single individual won a big old heaping mess
o' Powerball money down South Carolina way. Good for
him,
or her, but
very lucky of them, too.
I used to try my hand at the Texas Lottery back
when such things became legal but then I did
the math and stopped wasting my money.
The math? Here's how I visualize it:
An 8000-foot-high stack of ordinary typing paper (about
a mile-and-a-half high) represents approximately fifteen
million sheets of paper. Fifteen-million-to-one
is, coincidentally enough, the odds of
winning the Texas version of the lotto. (Odds of winning
the Powerball lottery is over ten times greater, or
a thirteen mile-high stack of paper.)
So in playing the lottery you bet one American dollar
that you can can walk up to that immense stack, a pile
so
high
that
most
people
would
find it
difficult to discern the topmost pages with the unaided
eye, and pluck out the single page that will make you
rich. Good
luck with that.
VERY good luck.
In case you're wondering, you wouldn't require an 8000-foot
stepstool to make your selection. Choosing the
page at the
bottom
of the pile gives you the exact same mathematical chance
of winning as any of the other fifteen million pages.
Yes, pure, random chance can certainly win you the
lottery but Lady Luck will snicker daintily into the
back of
her
gloved hand each time you try.
PS: I realize some of the lottery money is targeted
for schools and other worthy
recipients but, in the final analysis, the lottery
is just a tax on people who are bad with money.
=Lefty=
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