![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/schrodinger-150x150.jpg\")
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I’ve always had mixed feelings about the lottery. On the one hand, the odds of winning are so ridiculously small that it feels very much like a tax on people who don’t understand probabilities.<\/p>\n
On the other, a non-zero chance at becoming obscenely wealthy is significantly different than a zero percent chance.<\/p>\n
For a while, I settled on occasionally buying lottery tickets, then ripping them up after I lost.<\/p>\n
The problem with that process is that the disappointment of losing far outweighs any fun that might be derived from purchasing or owning the ticket.<\/p>\n
And then I made a crucial realization: I didn’t have to check my ticket.<\/p>\n
As long as I don’t look at my lottery ticket, it is quite possible that I am a multi-millionaire.<\/p>\n
Now, when I buy the occasional lottery ticket, I carefully stash it away.<\/p>\n
Am I a millionaire? Maybe, maybe not. I just don’t know. The next time the news broadcasts a story about an unclaimed lottery ticket, however. . . Well, let’s just say it could be exciting.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I have discovered a new approach to lottery tickets that leaves me in a perpetual state of possibility. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":468,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/schrodinger.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DpYi-7u","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=464"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":470,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464\/revisions\/470"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}