[Newspoetry] winning lottery numbers

[Joe Futrelle]

On Wed, May 10, 2000 at 09:56:25AM -0500, Maiko Covington wrote:
> On Tue, 9 May 2000, Joe Futrelle wrote:
> 
> > 33 million Americans below the poverty line.
> > 
> > 2 kinds of people; those who buy lottery tickets and those who find
> > that it's not worth their time to buy lottery tickets.
> 
> 	Well, 3 kinds of people. There are those of us who bought tickets
> for crazy people living in the Bay Area for a fee and used that small fee
> to buy huge, jelly-filled, sweet, frosted DOUGHNUTS to go with our morning
> coffee this AM.

Did you really do that?

2 kinds of people: those who spell it "doughnuts" and those who spell
it "donuts" ;)

> > 1 winner: the states selling the tickets.
> 
> 	If people really really gotta play the lottery, they were far
> better off when it was the old illegal local numbers games. The jackpots
> were smaller, yes, but the odds were much better, and as all the players
> were in one small local area, the money tended to stay in town. On a 
> regular basis, neighborhood people's pocket change would turn into one
> smallish windfall for some guy to make improvements to his place, or
> whatever. Of course, the state wasn't getting its cut.
> 
> > 12 times more likely to die of a heart attack while waiting in line to
> > buy the ticket than you are to win.
> 
> 	Apparently one had better odds of successfully dropping a penny
> from the top of the Sears Tower into a dixie cup on the sidewalk below
> than winning this thing. Buy another ticket? You get to drop another penny.
> Maybe THAT one will make it...

BTW I just made up this statistic; I just heard it was "more" likely.

--
Joe Futrelle
Editor-within-chief,
Newspoetry dot com