Crazy Lawsuit Game

Damn right it's Flock of Seagulls.

Fairly busy today, heading out to the research park (the newest Clemson building that is 15 minutes away) for a little shooting X-rays at crystals and then looking at the resulting x-rays emitted by the sample. EDX or Elemental Dispersive X-ray Analysis, very very cool. If your sample is small and stable under vacuum, you too can fire x-rays at it and get a rough elemental composition of it. It's great!

I know you're all jealous, but I'm sure you do cool things of which I would be jealous.

I read in The Week that according to the AP (Associated Press) who interviewed 1,000 college students, the most likely to cheat (27%) were journalism majors, followed by business majors (26%) and the lowest? SCIENCE MAJORS with a not really that much lower 19%.

Shit, I forgot to tell you guys that 1 in 5 Americans, 20%, think that the best way to get $200,000 in the bank was to win the lottery. I just googled the US population and the CIA told me it was 295,734,134 or 300 million to make math easier. So to the 240 million Americans who recognize that the lottery is a scam (albeit a nice fantasy) congratulations, you pass the test.

Now to the other 60 million Americans, next time you go to play Lotto, Powerball, MegaMillions, please please please, ask to see the odds. They are astronomical, but don't take my word for it.

According to Powerball's website, the odds of winning the whole shebang are:
1 in 146,107,962

Ok, so that's a really small number next to a really big number, so what are the odds of other life occurrences Mr. Smarty Pants? So glad you asked.
First a few that are less likely than winning the Powerball.

Chance of dying from a shark attack: 1 in 300,000,000
Odds of a meteor landing on your house: 182,138,880,000,000 to 1
Odds of being killed on a 5-mile bus trip: 500,000,000 to 1

So there you go, 3 things that are less likely to happen than winning the lottery. Feel pretty good yeah? Gonna run out and buy some lottery tickets?
Here is a brief sampling of events that are MORE likely to happen than you winning the Powerball.

Odds of injury from mowing the lawn: 3,623 to 1
Odds of drowning in a bathtub: 685,000 to 1
Odds of being murdered: 18,000 to 1
Odds of being struck by lightning: 576,000 to 1
Odds of being killed by lightning: 2,320,000 to 1
Odds of becoming president: 10,000,000 to 1
Chance of dying from a car accident: 1 in 18,585
Chance of dying from being bitten by a dog: 1 in 700,000

And you don't want to know the odds for getting cancer. You just don't. But for the curios, the complete list of what I just quoted can be found right over here.

And I don't know where this guy got those odds from, but you get the general idea. And if you're wondering how they calculate the odds for Powerball, check this out.

One of this author's, Durango Bill, closing remarks, which I will let stand on its own. Tomorrow I'll tell you about my one sighting of a UFO. Seriously. No I was not anally probed, jerks.

A lottery is a "Zero-sum game". What one group of participants gains in cash, the other group of participants must lose. If we made a list of all the participants in a lottery, it might include:

1) Federal Government (Lottery winnings are taxable)
2) State Governments (Again lottery winnings are taxable)
3) State Governments (Direct share of lottery ticket sales)
4) Merchants that sell tickets (Paid by the lottery organizers)
5) Lottery companies (Hint: They are not doing all this for free)
6) Advertisers and promoters (Paid by the lottery companies)
7) Lottery ticket buyers (Buy lottery tickets and receive payouts)

The winners in the above list are:
1) Federal Government
2) State Government (Taxes)
3) State Government (Direct share)
4) Merchants that sell tickets
5) Lottery companies
6) Advertisers and promoters

And the losers are:
(Mathematically challenged and proud of it)