Skip to main content

Random Thoughts - 11

Powerball Lottery.
The Powerball lottery was just won with a $700,000,000+ jackpot.  It occurred to me this lotto gives many millions of people something unavailable centuries ago. Given is a measure of hope for wealth and position far beyond any expectation but more important, any possibility. Of course, the measure is faux, false, incorrect, wrong, mistaken, misleading, faulty, inaccurate, invalid, improper, unfounded, erroneous, and downright effectively impossible.  Yet, for these same millions, it gives a few minutes of hope, the small flicker of light within a dark life without much chance of escape.

Is the Lotto wrong?  Or is it a tool used by those in power to quiet the distant drum of revolution? Possibly not.  Maybe it’s a tool merely for those in power to make money and also to quiet the resonance of grumble? Possibly so.

BTW, I bought a ticket for the last drawing.  Though I have enough for comfort, still I did see that flicker of light, feel that brief hope, and dream a bit – if only for a few moments.

When you understand the chance of winning the Powerball is smaller than being struck by lightening twice in the same year, then you know the meaning of the word “impossible.”

-------------------------
And speaking of dreaming....

Ferrari
Ferrari has announced it newest model sports car, the Portofino.  The price is not yet announced but they say it will be the most affordable model yet.  “Incredibly affordable,”  they stress.   

“Affordable, affordable, affordable,” chimed in House minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, right on cue. 


FACHA - the Ferrari Affordable Health Care Act.  We got that. Now for the car.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Human Simulation is Possible - by Humans

  Human Simulation: Agent-Based Modeling and the Computational Case for Our Reality   1.       Introduction In the essay, we introduce the notion that humanity could be a deliberate simulation based on an extremely simple single-celled organism, hardly anything more complex than that. This will allow an (apparently) new interpretation of the notion that humanity is simulated, but that there is no master engineer at a massive number of dials and switches, responsible for every twist and turn of our universe and lives. We begin with the notion that the universe exists and operates under its own laws. So, given the Earth [2] , when and where life first began, it was infused with a living agent, self-actualized, reproductive, and with other basic rules for its operations, interactions, and much of what single-celled organisms do today. The idea from this occurred some years back when writing code in ActionScript (formerly Flash), I was able to create...

The Calculus of Ideas and Patterns

  Introduction. When dealing with ideas, patterns, intuition, and brainstorming, we need operations or rules not unlike those of arithmetic. The goal is not proof, a finished device, or a fait accompli , but rather a foundation for further investigation and study. In some cases, these operations may yield a proposition, that is, something capable of being proved. In this sense, they form a practical logic of intuition. The article concludes with a few select examples from a variety of venues. Setting. We are working with a given idea, problem, or project, or simply just thinking. Our aim is to discover pathways, patterns, or conceptual connections that may be useful. The following operations describe ways in which ideas and patterns can be generated, transformed, or refined. These also work toward understanding the imagination. Yet, this framework is distinguished from formal logic and proof. We are tempted to call them as “soft logic” because while nothing is proved, reasons...

Freedom of Speech

  Think of freedom of speech as a living organism. Then think of what is required for it to survive. Coming to mind are a population agreeable to its constitution (its environment) and the institutions (its nutrients) that keep it healthy. Currently, many institutions, including some political parties, question unfettered freedom of speech and are working to deny it, claiming it is unhealthy for the body politic. Yes? No?