Powerball

When I saw the headline “Oklahoma couple claims $105.8M Powerball prize” I wondered about the age and profession of the husband. I also wondered if he would keep his job. And by “wondered” I mean I already knew it would be an older guy in a blue collar job who plans to keep working. Isn’t it always?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11669215/

I don’t want to accuse the Powerball people of fixing these lotteries. But I notice that the people who win are coincidentally the people who would be best for marketing future Powerball lotteries. You know what story you will never hear about a lottery winner? It’s this one:

“Wealthy bachelor neurosurgeon, age 30, wins $300 million in the lottery. The lucky winner, Winston Arbuckle III, says he plans to “Buy another yacht, smoke more weed, and float around the Mediterranean until I die from the clap.” Asked about his neurosurgery practice, Arbuckle quipped, “I never liked sick people.”

No, you will only hear stories about the modest couple with the hard-working husband, usually in his late fifties or early sixties. They will be “thinking about” getting a nicer house. In this latest lottery story, the husband is a long-haul trucker whose truck has recently crapped out. He plans to buy a new (used) truck and keep working. He says there’s only so much time you can spend fishing.

That’s his story. And I believe it. But I can’t help wondering if he had any thoughts along these lines:

“Holy shit. I don’t want to spend more time with my wife. What am I going to do? I know, I’ll say I’m going to keep working. That will make me look like a great guy. But I’ll hire a chauffeur to drive the truck for me. I’ll trick out the trailer part with a beer tap, big screen TV and a sofa. And I’ll only pretend to be transporting air conditioners. I’ll just tell Jeeves to drive me around the country while I sit in the back eating onion rings and farting into the couch. We’ll only stop to refuel and pick up prostitutes. YEE-HAAA!!!”

Did I just accidentally write a script for the next Adam Sandler movie?

Comments

[AMS]

Well, to the person who appears to be upset because, I really don't know why. The odds of winning the lottery are slim to none, everyone knows this, and it is by chance anyone does win. But as for the trucker who won, maybe he has always wanted a new truck, they are expensive, you know. Maybe he likes his wife and has a hard time adjusting to not working every day, like many hard working Americans. All truckers don't drink beer, and sit around and fart! As a truckers wife, most truckers are people just like all other people who do a job and provide a service for Americans. Some tuckers love their wives, come from respectable families, raise well mannered, christian, educated children and respect people and believe it or not they don't all pick up prostitutes. So what ever your angry about, not winning the lottery or what ever, get some therapy!

[dizi izle]

thanks...

[ed flowers]

see the hottest/coldest lotto numbers for the

Powerball lottery
Popularity Report
Hot numbers ???
Note: Powerballs not included here
=================================================
times Last
Ranking Number occurred hit on
1 B30 32 02/09/08
2 B54 32 01/30/08
3 B02 31 03/01/08
4 B19 31 03/01/08
5 B35 31 01/26/08
6 B43 31 02/09/08
7 B08 30 02/23/08
8 B13 30 02/23/08
9 B16 30 03/05/08
10 B42 30 02/06/08
11 B23 29 03/05/08
12 B38 29 02/13/08
13 B40 29 01/05/08
14 B24 28 02/27/08
15 B26 28 02/02/08
16 B48 28 02/27/08
17 B55 28 03/01/08
18 B12 27 02/20/08
19 B15 26 03/05/08
20 B47 26 02/23/08
21 B50 26 12/15/07
22 B10 25 03/05/08
23 B14 25 02/02/08
24 B22 25 02/20/08
25 B27 24 01/19/08
26 B37 24 02/27/08
27 B49 24 03/08/08
28 B53 24 02/27/08
29 B03 23 02/16/08
30 B34 23 03/08/08
31 B45 23 09/19/07
32 B20 22 02/27/08
33 B28 22 01/19/08
34 B36 22 02/20/08
35 B41 22 01/30/08
36 B01 21 12/05/07
37 B04 21 02/16/08
38 B07 21 12/12/07
39 B21 21 03/01/08
40 B31 21 03/08/08
41 B32 21 02/13/08
42 B39 21 01/26/08
43 B09 20 02/20/08
44 B11 20 01/26/08
45 B18 20 01/16/08
46 B05 19 02/06/08
47 B51 19 02/13/08
48 B52 19 11/17/07
49 B17 18 03/08/08
50 B46 18 11/07/07
51 B29 17 03/08/08
52 B44 17 02/02/08
53 B06 16 11/10/07
54 B25 16 02/02/08
55 B33 14 01/05/08
=====================================
= end of pop report =

see more Powerball Lotto reporting and stats
at www.needto.net/index.html
best of luck in the next Powerball Lotto
www.needto.net/powerball.htm more Powerball lotto reports

see more lottery reporting and stats at www.needto.net/index.html
including the MegaMillions lotto

[Sondra]

My new home here in Key West is not soundproof, so now the neighbors know how much wine I had with lunch. This was too funny...float around the Mediterranean until I die from the clap. Even now...LOL

[Roby Bang]

But then again, think about who buys lotto tickets. Do you? I bet not, because you are financially well off, and you realise that you have the same probability of winning the lottery than having Martians stop by your house and asking for directions to Alpha Centauri (or the odds of knowing where Alpha Centauri is, no offense). but the people who buy lotto tickets usually are either desperate for money, or are so stupid that they think they can beat the odds. Which, by the way, have you noticed that the people who religiously buy fifty lotto tickets a week are the same people who believe that Martians stopped by their house and asked directions to Alpha Centauri? See ya!

~~Roby Bang

[NotNasser]

Actually, that's too good for an Adam Sandler movie. Probably a bit of a stretch for David Spade, too. Though he could play the chaffeur.

[Tyco]

ell u what scott... why dont u give me a couple of million... then Í ACTUALLY WILL sit back and do nothing for the rest of my life.. do we have a deal??? :)

'';!--"=&{()}

[eclecticdog]

I play when the jackpot gets over $150 million, buying just 1 ticket. If I won (fat chance) I'd never work again. I don't need a big house, but a second home would be nice (summers are a killer in Phoenix). Education accounts for the nieces, pay off my siblings' mortgages, maybe even dole shares out if the payout is big enough. Already have a financial advisor. Keep doing what I am doing? NO WAY - tech writers are toe jam to every company I've worked for. Screw'em, let someone in India do it for 'em with three times the manpower and four times the wait, at a third of my cost (secretly I am glad the US$ is devaluing as it will increase my former employers cost and make them look like the idiots they truly are).

As an aside, there was an engineering fellow who won $7 million in the state lottery. He had already worked there for 40 years -- so his pension was slamming, he was at the top of the engineering heap (so already well into six figures for a salary for many years), and he kept working. This during layoffs and downsizing and right-sizing. They finally forced him out during the third round (f*cking jerk).

[Mike]

The air-conditioning is a phase-change reaction whereby a fluid absorbs heat as it evaporates, and then stores that heat when recompressed (whereby it exchanges that heat with the atmosphere in the condenser).

That's a physical reaction, not a chemical one.

[Kilgore J. Trout]

You are not a retard but on the money with this one.

[Mark Bowness]

Your comments crack me up man!

Mark Bowness

[Lisa]

Like Jeff Foxworthy says, the lottery is the Redneck Retirement Plan.

[Captain Lotto]

Since Lotteries are based on random numbers there is no way to predict where the winners will come from, but what we've found in Missouri is that it's proportional to where the players come from. That means more winners from the cities, and they often hold blue collar jobs, because that's representative of the population. Stats from the Missouri Lottery indicate that winners tend to be slightly older than the state average, which is somewhat skewed by the age limitation of being 18 to play, but it probably indicates that older people are playing with more frequency. The only reason to play is fun and anyone can win, but only if you buy a ticket. Good luck.

[Mr. Wampus]

To those who are saying that only idiots play the lottery, here's another way to look at it. The Powerball lottery says that the odds of winning are 146 million to 1. Now from a purely statistical standpoint, I agree, those odds are pretty slim and it's pretty foolish to spend much money on tickets when the payoff is $15 million. But what about when the jackpot reaches $150 million. now, the payout ratio exceeds the odds ratio so even though your chances of winning have not improved, the reward now justifies the risk, but only if you pick only one number for $1. In other words, your 146 million to 1 risk is equaled by your $150 million to 1 potential payoff. If it gets to $300 million, buy 2 numbers.

So an intelligent person will consider the risk/reward equation and only play when the reward equals or betters the risk.

Of course, who ever heard of anyone buying a single lottery ticket for a $150 million jackpot?

[Scott Alan Miller]

While this scenario is slightly different from the usual "truck driver picking up prostitutes scenario, I believe the correct term for "prostitutes" involving a specialty in long-haul trucking is "lot lizard."

[realitytourist]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Whittaker_(lottery_winner)

Already rich, won the largest jackpot up to that time all by his lonesome, and it fucked up his already-fucked up life.

Welcome to the Lottery.

[niner]

The lottery is a self-imposed tax that the poor impose upon themselves to further increase wealth disparity in industrialized nations.

[Stomper]

Playing the lottery with the EXPECTATION of winning is dumb. Playing for the entertainment that comes from the HOPE of winning is cheap entertainment.

In our younger days, when we could only scrape together a buck or two for entertainment (after paying tuition for the wife and kids, medical bills, etc.), my wife and I could get an entire evening's entertainment out of "How would we spend the winnings?" One or two dollars to pay for numbers gave us a concrete foundation for the fantasy and speculation. Didn't need to pay a sitter for that one, either.

We both have graduate degrees, and we're far from dumb. But yeah, I'd probably have to keep working if we won just a few million. That's why I don't even bother to buy a ticket until the jackpot exceeds $60 million. There's not much entertainment value in the smaller jackpots, once you reduce the prize to "cash value" and subtract out the taxes.

I do tend to agree with Seamus McCauley, that people who have more experience with money are more likely to avoid publicity. I also suspect that the lottery players are predominantly working class, but that does not necessarily mean white-collar we workers are "too smart" to play the lottery. It may simply reflect the fact that there are far more working class types than white collar types in the population as a whole. Dunno. Somebody else will have to fabricate those statistics.

As to people who spend their winnings unwisely: I have encountered working-class people who come into large sums of money, and I have seen it happen. First, they have no idea how to manage or invest money like that, so they tend to make bad decisions and trust the wrong people (the "rich" uncle who makes nearly $60k a year met this stockbroker in a bar, see . . .).

Second, from the perspective of someone who makes less than $40k per year, a million dollars seems like an infinite amount of money. They are often not equipped to understand that being a millionaire does NOT guarantee you a mansion, and a fancy car, and a yacht, and extensive travel, and fancy parties. Whereas, your neurosurgeon who makes over $800k per year (pulling anumber out of thin air) recognizes that $1mm just doesn't pay for much of a change in his or her lifestyle.

The neurosurgeon already has a financial advisor, and bad advice won't break the bank, because (a) the neurosurgeon is diversified, and (b) the neurosurgeon can cover any likely loss by just working a little bit longer before retiring. And the neurosurgeon is ALREADY tired of hearing investment schemes from long-lost relatives, requests for charitable contributions, etc., long before he wins. So yeah, the approach to lottery winnings is gonna be very different.

--Stomper

[NewYork10011]

Neurosurgeons put their money with coke sniffing, pot smoking investment bankers, that's the rich's persons lottery!

[Sam Davis]

"Did I just accidentally write a script for the next Adam Sandler movie?"

Yes.

[Cube Critter]

I'd quit my job and be a college student in Perpetuity.
how many Bachechlor, Masters and PhD's can a man earn in one life time?

[Tomas Liubinas]

I never play lottery. The winning would instantly screw what I have good in life and what I get? Something to enjoy for two weeks? Nah, not for me :))

Greetings from Lithuania

[John Simmons]

(If your dumb enough to play, then its likely you don't have a great job.)

Your theory is falsified. I have a great job, and I play lottery.

I would also say that playing the lottery does not imply a person is "dumb". Overly optimistic, perhaps, given the odds...

[N. Onimus]

Mere probability, perhaps? I'd wager there are 5,000 poor induhviduals for every wealthy neurosurgeon in the USA.

[Jo]

You do hear a lot about the modest lotto winners, but if you have never heard of this guy before check him out as he is completly the opposite...

Michael Carrol, The lotto lout! lol