Users that often use this tag:
vidur (2)
dobbs (2)
The thrill and rush of possibly winning started to wear off after about the twentieth losing ticket. Each card had a couple of “Life” symbols on them, and every time you got a second you just dreamed of seeing the third one under the remaining graphite. However it never appeared and never will and it just kind of turned depressing. How could people put themselves through this humiliation and teasing every day of their lives?
The classic criticism of the lottery is that the people who play are the ones who can least afford to lose; that the lottery is a sink of money, draining wealth from those who most need it. Some lottery advocates . . . have tried to defend lottery-ticket buying as a rational purchase of fantasy—paying a dollar for a day's worth of pleasant anticipation, imagining yourself as a millionaire. But consider exactly what this implies. It would mean that you're occupying your valuable brain with a fantasy whose real probability is nearly zero—a tiny line of likelihood which you, yourself, can do nothing to realize. . . . Which makes the lottery another kind of sink: a sink of emotional energy. [via]
posted by Jasper Friendly Bear
on May 18, 2013 -
154 comments
Luck was a David Milch-created show on HBO last year. It was cancelled after one season. Some of you might have dug it. If so, you might also dig
Out of Luck: "The following blog is the writer’s depiction of an imagined racetrack-based story, an ongoing saga, which includes some of the characters depicted in the ill-fated
Luck series." It's written by John Perrotta who was a writer/producer/story editor on the show.
posted by dobbs
on Feb 19, 2013 -
15 comments
"We have little trouble recognizing that a chess grandmaster’s victory over a novice is skill, as well as assuming that Paul the octopus’s ability to predict World Cup games is due to chance. But what about everything else?" [
Luck and Skill Untangled: The Science of Success]
posted by vidur
on Nov 20, 2012 -
16 comments
"My case illustrates how success is always rationalized. People really don’t like to hear success explained away as luck—especially successful people. As they age, and succeed, people feel their success was somehow inevitable. They don’t want to acknowledge the role played by accident in their lives. There is a reason for this: the world does not want to acknowledge it either."
Michael Lewis's address to the Princeton Class of 2012.
posted by vidur
on Jun 4, 2012 -
58 comments
David Milch, creator of
Deadwood,
John From Cincinnati, and
NYPD Blue reads from Luck, his Michael Mann-directed
upcoming show for HBO. Following the reading there's a Q&A. (mp3)
posted by dobbs
on May 7, 2010 -
26 comments
Maneki Neko is a cat figurine, sits and has it's front paw raised as if it is calling for luck, fortune and customers to your store, and invites happiness to your home.
posted by riffola
on Dec 5, 2003 -
15 comments
Intacto - An interesting foreign language film about the mechanics of luck as a commodity. I just wanted this film last night and am trying to understand all of the possible permutations of how luck worked in this movie. Anyone interested in discussing it is encouraged to do so.
posted by Wong Fei-hung
on Jul 18, 2003 -
7 comments
Is he the world's
unluckiest man or the
luckiest? Either way, Croatia's Frane Selak, who had already
gained attention for escaping death
seven times, has just hit the jackpot with his first lottery ticket in forty years. How can we normal mortals compete?
posted by rory
on Jun 19, 2003 -
13 comments
God did it? I'm not usually one to accredit daily occurrences to the whim of the Almighty, but in this case, one has to wonder. A young man is thrown from his vehicle in a rollover crash, ejected, and saves himself from impact by catching the telephone lines 25 feet overhead.
posted by Ogre Lawless
on Jan 29, 2003 -
101 comments
I bought 3 Quick Picks for the Lottery this week, thinking that if there were any balance in the universe I'd be due for a big payoff...
If SuperLotto was High/Low, I'd have nailed it. I got
one number.
ONE.
5 number for lotto x 3 quick picks = 15 potential correct numbers. I got
ONE.
On the upside, I'm still
due. Touch me now, I'm jam packed full of luck potentiality...
posted by CrazyUncleJoe
on Mar 4, 2000 -
5 comments
