{"id":14204,"date":"2011-09-28T17:38:30","date_gmt":"2011-09-29T00:38:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=14204"},"modified":"2011-09-28T17:41:49","modified_gmt":"2011-09-29T00:41:49","slug":"quote-a-carrying-charge-for-hope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=14204","title":{"rendered":"Quote: A Carrying Charge For Hope"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This quote <a href=\"http:\/\/noseriouslywhatabouttehmenz.wordpress.com\/2011\/09\/28\/the-success-industry\/\">from Noah Brand<\/a> is perfectly expressed:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>People joke about lottery tickets as a tax on people who are bad at math, but I don\u2019t think that\u2019s true. Lottery tickets are a carrying charge for hope. Between the time you buy the ticket and the time the drawing reconfirms that you\u2019re a loser, there\u2019s a window where you have this bare edge of hope, this idea that maybe, just maybe, in a few days you won\u2019t have to be afraid or ashamed any more. Sure, rationally you know that one chance in a hundred million isn\u2019t very good, but the sweet taste of that maybe is worth a dollar.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I&#8217;ve never bought a lottery ticket, but when I was 19 or so I returned a &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Publishers_Clearing_House\">Publishers Clearing House<\/a>&#8221; sweepstakes entry. After which I found myself dreaming, again and again, of how I&#8217;d use the money if I won. It supplanted my usual daydreams. I found it unnerving, and haven&#8217;t participated in any such thing since.<\/p>\n<p>By the way, I don&#8217;t see anything wrong with buying a lottery ticket. I don&#8217;t do it because my mind doesn&#8217;t handle it well, but I&#8217;m sure others can just enjoy it for the entertainment value of a few days extra hope, and that&#8217;s fine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This quote from Noah Brand is perfectly expressed: People joke about lottery tickets as a tax on people who are bad at math, but I don\u2019t think that\u2019s true. Lottery tickets are a carrying charge for hope. Between the time &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=14204\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[135,92],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crossposted-on-tada","category-whatever"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14204"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14204\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14206,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14204\/revisions\/14206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}