Notes on a large Powerball jackpot prize

Literally that, notes on tonight's near-record Powerball jackpot prize drawing:

1) If you were one of 175,223,510 people (you can't imagine that many), standing, say, in the middle of them, and a mile up someone with a paper airplane was to gently push it out over that crowd, that's how likely it is you'd get the jackpot prize;

2) If we must have lotteries for millions--and apparently we must--someone needs to set one up where each winner wins, at most, 1 million dollars. It would spread the prize out over the region and state and nation and do far more good for far more people and it would be greatly less likely to mess people up with such large sums. Could you imagine if 600 people tonight each won $1 million, spread out equally over the entire country? It would do a nation of good, in not a world;

3) If no one wins tonight, it will get perilously close to 1 billion dollars for a jackpot prize Wednesday evening.

That's crazy.

4) If one person only wins this second-largest-ever jackpot prize, it will likely--very likely--screw them up.

That said, when it comes to lots of money, I defer to Mark Twain's quote:

"I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position."

And Dorothy Parker's:

“I don't know much about being a millionaire, but I'll bet I'd be darling at it.”

Good luck campers and have a great weekend.

Lessons on a Monday in February

Lesson one:

Societies shouldn't have mechanisms created that take large amounts of money and transfer them to people of formerly extremely small means. Put another way, it is nearly crazy for a society to have a lottery in which middle class or lower middle class people can win millions of dollars.

It's a mistake virtually always.

It doesn't make sense.

It's a mistake looking to happen.

Wanna' have a terrific documentary? Rush to Georgia right now and start filming the family who just won 270 million dollars in the "Mega-Millions" lottery. It'll be a runaway success. This has tragedy written all over it (unless this family is extremely lucky--or smart).

Lesson number 2: World leaders should NOT hand uncompeted contracts worth large sums of money (read: millions of dollars--again) to friends, colleagues or associates. (See "Day 2" below).

I was right. The contract given to former Attorney General John Ashcroft for between 27 and 52 million dollars, according to the Associated Press, was not competed by the government--yours and mine--that gave it to him.

I wish I had been wrong.