Category: Blogging

Day 19: Lotto Logic

There are many, many lotteries available for people to play. They’ve sometimes been called “a tax on people who are bad at math“. That’s amusing enough, but I also see them as a way for the state to prey on poor people by offering them false hope. Go to any corner store in a poor neighborhood, and right in that choice spot right next to the checkout register will be the lottery tickets.

Before lotteries were legal, the numbers game was a big thing. Same basic idea: bet a dollar for a chance to win a jackpot. In New York, the numbers was run by the Mafia, and running around the neighborhood collecting bets was a common first job for wannabe gangsters. The government rarely enforced the laws against gambling for these rackets, but soon figured out that instead of spending money to track down and bust these operations, they could just create a legal lottery and collect the house’s cut for themselves. Of course, they made it more palatable by saying that the money collected would be used for education. Turns out that they cut the budgets for education by the amount that the lotteries generated, so while the lottery money technically did go to education, it didn’t add to the funds for schools.

In recent years the trend has been away from state-run lotteries toward massive multi-state games, such as Mega Millions and Powerball. The reason for this is that the jackpots get absurdly big after only a few draws. It is not uncommon for the jackpots to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. When they get that high, people go crazy buying tickets.

The odds of selecting the right numbers for Mega Millions is 1 in 36,309,042,000. That’s one in 36 BILLION.

You may wonder what is the ideal strategy for playing these games. Many people would argue that the best strategy is not to play at all – and they have a good point. I think, though, that it depends.

If you don’t play, your chances of winning is zero. If you play the smallest amount, a single $2 game, your chance increases from zero to 1 in 36 billion. That’s significant, as it changes your possible result from definitely not winning to having an infinitesimal chance of winning.

So if you play more games per drawing, your chances increase, right. Well, in one sense they do, but in a more practical sense, they are still infinitesimal. But remember that the money you bet comes out of your disposable income. For most people, that much money is much more than one billionth! The lower your income, the more significant a chunk will be (likely) lost to the lottery.

Even if you don’t win, though, playing the lottery buys you something: the chance to dream of winning! From the moment you buy the ticket until you check your numbers, you are in that Schrödinger state of winning and not winning, and can fantasize about luxurious travel, or expensive cars, or whatever else you would do with that much money. That ability to dream is a benefit that many people overlook, but it’s the part that the people running the lottery count on to get you to buy those tickets.

The best strategy, then, is to buy a single ticket, unless that $2 would mean doing without basic necessities. By buying a single ticket you have some chance, albeit minuscule. Buying more than one doesn’t really increase your chances significantly, but takes a bigger and bigger bite out of your disposable income. So buy that one ticket, and dream away!

Day 18: Ethical vs. Legal

Back when he was in college, soon-to-be Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg famously wrote:

You can be unethical and still be legal that’s the way i live my life

Mark Zuckerberg, in an instant message sent to a friend

We’ve seen what Facebook has become, and know now that he really meant it. And it’s just not him; many people feel that as long as there’s no law against it, it’s fine to do. Or even if there’s a way of interpreting an existing law that exempts the particular thing they want to do, it’s OK.

Ideally, laws and regulations exist to codify a society’s sense of what is ethical. When I was growing up, it was perfectly legal for anyone to dump anything into any body of water. And it wasn’t just big factories that were doing this. When I walked to school I crossed the Hackensack River, and just upstream was a car wash. I remember always seeing foamy bubbles floating on the river as I passed. It was not uncommon to see big rainbow-colored oil slicks, too.

The environmental movement of the ’60s led to laws against this and many other types of pollution. These laws represented the sense of people that it was not ethical to pollute, ruining things so that a company can save a few dollars. Fast forward to today to find many of these environmental regulations being loosened or removed, just so the big political donors can make a few more dollars.

Back in the 1920s, there was rampant financial speculation, making a few people rich, but destabilizing the overall financial system. The collapse of that system led to the Great Depression. At that time new laws were enacted to make those shady financial practices illegal. One such law, the Glass-Steagall Act, forced the separation of commercial banks, which regular people and businesses relied upon, and investment banks, which were in the business of underwriting all types of securities. That separation worked well for nearly 70 years.

But then in the 1990s, banks began to clamor for the removal of these restrictions. There was just too much money to be made! So in 1999, Democratic President Bill Clinton signed into law the Gramm‐​Leach‐​Bliley Act, which essentially repealed Glass-Steagal, and allowed for single corporations to be involved in all kinds of financial services. No longer prohibited from this type of financial intermingling, corporations merged with each other to create financial powerhouses – the so-called Too Big To Fail companies. The financial collapse and subsequent government bailout of these companies was the chief cause of the 2007–8 global financial crisis, and the Great Recession.

After that crisis some laws were enacted to address the shortcomings of the current system, but the lobbying by these companies has made it nearly impossible to enact laws as strict as those from the 1930s. So while the mixing of risky and secured securities is still legal, most people consider it unethical. After all, when those risks pay off, the corporation makes a lot of money. But when they fail, the government (that’s us) picks up the tab.

Another great example of a regulation that was vilified was the FCC Fairness Doctrine, which required that TV and radio stations to devote some of their air time to matters of public interest, and to enable different viewpoints to be heard. This requirement was removed by the Reagan Administration in 1987. Shortly after that, Fox News was born. They are probably the grossest example of what the Fairness Doctrine was designed to prevent: one-sided propaganda that is capable of ill-informing its viewers.

There are laws that govern what you can and cannot do with people seeking asylum at the border. The Trump administration didn’t like those laws, so he issued an executive order that made the image below legal. I’ll leave it up to you to decide if it is ethical to separate children from their parents and keep them in cages.

Immigrant kids seen held in fenced cages at border facility
Children held in cages, McAllen, TX 2018

And remember, Auschwitz and the other camps were also legal, but I can’t think of anything less ethical.

So when you hear politicians, especially conservatives, rail against “regulation”, what it really means is that they want to be able cheat and cut corners in order to make a fast buck. Of course, it isn’t difficult to cite some overzealous regulations that serve no purpose – no system of laws is perfect. But to extrapolate that to the conclusion that all regulations are bad is a clear sign that someone’s trying to get away with something.

Day 17: Lazarus

This past Sunday I awoke to find that one of the two Eastern Black Swallowtail caterpillars had drowned. I had some plant material in a small vase with a cover, but the opening of the cover enlarged, and the caterpillar fell in the water. I felt incredibly guilty, and incredibly sad.

I removed the caterpillar from the bottle of water and gave it what I considered a proper burial: our kitchen scrap compost container. We keep a plastic tub by the sink, and put all our compostable bits in there: coffee grounds, paper towels, food that’s no longer edible, etc. Into that mix went the caterpillar. As the day progressed we added more things to the tub from our meals.

That was Sunday morning. On Tuesday afternoon I was walking through the kitchen, and couldn’t believe my eyes. There, in the middle of the floor, was a swallowtail caterpillar! It wasn’t a newly-hatched one, either: it was as big as the one that had drowned.

My mind raced to figure out where this caterpillar came from. Could it be one of the tiny caterpillars that might have crawled out of the container we keep them in, now grown much larger? No, because it would not have had access to food. Could it have somehow gotten on my clothes while I was in the garden without me noticing? Not very likely, as I inspect all the host plants at least once a day for new eggs/caterpillars, and there’s no way I would have missed a caterpillar long enough for it to get that big.

There was only one explanation: the caterpillar that had drowned had somehow survived, and then made its way out of the compost bin, down from the counter, and then crawled approximately 15 feet to the spot where I found it. That sounded too preposterous to be likely, so I started searching the net. But sure enough, caterpillars can survive drowning if they are dried out quickly enough!

What makes this even more amazing is that I didn’t do anything to revive it. In fact, it was treated like any other scrap in the compost bin, and probably had the morning’s coffee grounds dumped on it, along with other things throughout the day. I’m guessing that there may have been some paper towels that drew the water out of the caterpillar, allowing it to breathe once more, and then the feisty little guy just started crawling, and made its way out of the bin. It’s also amazing that in the two days between its burial in the compost and re-discovery, we didn’t step on it as it was crawling on the floor, or our cat didn’t find it and make it his new play toy.

I ran out and grabbed a sprig of rue, the host plant it was feeding on, and placed it on the floor in front of the miracle caterpillar. It crawled onto it and started munching away. I picked up the sprig with the caterpillar clinging on, and placed it back in the “nursery”, this time with no standing water hazard. I’m happy to report that two days later the caterpillar is still eating and pooping as if nothing had ever happened.

Lazarus, rue, and frass

I’ve never named the caterpillars I’ve raised; frankly, the only way to differentiate them is size, and that changes constantly. But I had already started calling this one Lazarus, after the biblical story of a dead man who had been brought back to life. Later that day I was listening to music on shuffle, and David Bowie’s song Lazarus came on, further crystallizing that name for me.

I will be sure to post photos when Lazarus emerges as a butterfly!

Day 16: Barefoot People Have the Cleanest Floors

I like to go barefoot whenever I can. Outdoors I wear footwear when I need to, but once I’m home, the shoes come off. I’ve preferred being barefoot for as long as I can remember. And as I’m walking around the house I tend to notice things on the floor, like crumbs from toast in the kitchen, or bits of kitty litter that our cat likes to distribute around his box. I find myself sweeping and vacuuming often, because I get annoyed by the feeling of walking on things that shouldn’t be there.

It got me thinking: if I wore shoes or even slippers around the house, would it bother me as much? Would I feel the need to clean as often? So I posted this on Twitter:

It was a kind of throwaway tweet, but the idea stuck with me. People tend to work to improve the things that affect them the most, especially if it is a pain point. But if that same thing that bothers someone enough for them to get motivated to fix doesn’t bother you, you probably would wonder what the big deal is. It doesn’t bother me; why are those other people so worked up about it?

White people are walking around this country as if they are wearing hiking boots. People of color, though, are barefoot and they feel every bit of the systemic racism that reminds them constantly that they are the “other”. When you’re white those things don’t register in your consciousness, because those thick soles of your hiking boots insulate you from it.

Those boots are a metaphor for white privilege. When black people voice their issues, it’s easy to dismiss them as imagined or overblown, because if they really were that bad, you’d notice it too, right? It takes something like the video of George Floyd being murdered by that cop to finally get through to white people just how bad things are for black people in this country.

It’s good that people, white and black, are getting angry and calling out for reform and improvement. But that’s not enough: we white people need to keep listening. We can’t take off our metaphorical boots, but we can learn that since our experience is not the same as others, the voices from others need to be heard and valued if we are ever going to improve the world for all people.

Day 15: Pupation

Yes, that’s actually a word.

As I mentioned a few days ago, I raise caterpillars. I had two caterpillars that were growing well when the one in that post drowned, but later that day the other one began the process of turning into a pupa, which is the stage where its insides dissolve and re-assemble into an adult butterfly. And I was l fortunate enough to record video of that happening.

Some moths spin a cocoon of silk to encase themselves while they transform, but butterflies do not. Instead, they simply shed their skin. I say “simply”, but it’s pretty amazing.

As caterpillars hatch, they go through several stages, or instars, as they grow. At each of these stages, they shed their old skin to reveal a newer, bigger skin underneath, and each stage looks different than the others.

Black Swallowtail stages from caterpillar to butterfly
Eastern Black Swallowtail stages of development

Once the caterpillars have grown enough, they stop eating, and attach their tail end to a branch or other surface, and spin a sling of silk to hold them in place (see the “pre-pupa” in the image above). Over several hours the caterpillar just seems to be hanging out there, but there is a lot going on.

First, its body is detaching itself from its legs. It’s also sealing off its mouth and rectum. Then it begins forming a relatively tough, solid layer of skin underneath its existing skin. Once that skin is complete, the caterpillar begins to pulsate and wriggle, finally splitting its old skin and then shimmying its way out of it.

So when the caterpillar attached itself yesterday, I set up my phone’s camera to time-lapse, and left it running for several hours. The video is really amazing to watch.

If all goes well, this little guy will remain as a pupa for around 2 weeks, and then it will crack open that chrysalis, and emerge as a beautiful adult butterfly. I’ll be sure to post about that when it happens!