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Odds, and Hawaiian Generosity

7/18/2018

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I'm inclined to indulge in a political rant, but my urges have been restrained.
So, a few other things. 
One thing is to mention, in case folks read this page and none of the others, that I have created an Author's page on Face Book that features excerpts from my four novels. I'll add one about every ten days, to tease you with what you'll find if you read the whole book.
We get more snail mail from Publisher's Clearing House than any other two or three sources, easily. But the mailman tells me that their mailings help keep the Post Office operating in this generation of electronic bill paying and email. But, GEEZ!! I gave up long ago looking through them and jumping through the hoops to get one or two little stamps hidden among dozens to stick on to the one piece of paper to mail back. My wife has more time, though, so she still pursues the dream. I used to go through that on the principle of pot odds.
Pot odds is a poker term that means (more or less) that your bet—your investment—makes or does not make sense depending on how much you risk against how much you have to gain. So I figured that the cost of a stamp, plus twenty minutes of my time would be good pot odds for winning a million dollars. Not anymore.
The current odds of winning PCH's $1,000 a day for life...or a new car priced at $50,000...are 1 in (drum roll) 6,200,000,000. That's one in 6 billion, 200 million. That is, one in the number of people on the entire earth in 2001.
Here's another: the contest to win one million dollars has odds of one in three billion, one hundred million. That is almost one thousand times the population of the United States.
The chance of being struck by lightning in a lifetime is about 1 in 12,000.
The odds of winning $1,000 in PCH's current contest are 475,000 to one. If you were to find someone willing, bet them one dollar against one thousand dollars that you will be struck by lightning in your life time. Your odds of winning that bet are about four times better than your odds of winning that thousand from PCH. Pot odds no longer apply.
 
On another subject, there are a certain number of rare excellent people in the world, and I am privileged to be acquainted with one of them though only through the cyber and print worlds.
If you go back to my 5/13 blog, I included a totally unsolicited but glowing review of Just Lucky, Book 1. That gentleman, Larry, when I asked, said that yes, he'd like a signed copy of Book 2. The cost was a few cents under $20, including postage. He sent me a package that contained an envelope with $20. It also contained a can of macadamia nuts, three boxes of chocolate covered macadamia nuts, a 2019 calendar featuring girls of Hawaii, a word-find puzzle book featuring Hawaiian words, and a book of Hawaiian ghost stories. Oh, and a Hawaiian bottle opener and a zippered insulated bottle wrap for one pint bottles.
Larry, if you are reading this, Mahalo Nui Loa, Hoaloha!
For the rest of you, please keep reading. And writing.
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    I'm a former teacher and current warehouse grunt that loves writing.

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