Until last week, I'm pretty sure that I would have agreed. But then the $50 worth of lottery tickets earned me $58 in cash. That is a net gain of 16% -- which is a pretty good rate of return. So, now I'm convinced that they're really just a waste of time. I don't see how people can get addicted to anything that boring and monotonous -- or, for that matter, how people think scratch-offs are all that much fun.
Anyway, the new poll is up. Vote here.
13 comments:
Since I find baseball more tedious than scratch off tickets, I didn't vote.
Can't wait for the NFL!
Scratch off lottery tickets are, in general, a waste of money. If the question was specific to the $50 worth you had, the answer would obviously be different.
I have a hypothesis: Whether or not you like baseball is directly related to your family. If you're from a family that likes -- or had members who played -- baseball, then you're likely to enjoy it.
Unless you're my brother, and decide that you hate baseball merely because such a statement is guaranteed to piss off your dad and grandfather.
Justin: My answer is necessarily informed by my prior experiences.
It can be fun to scratch off lottery tickets once in a while. Unless you spend a significant amount of money, I don't really think it's a waste, more than anything else, if you enjoy it. I don't buy lottery tickets myself, but I can see why others might.
In other words, baseball is either in your genes or it isn't? Makes sense to me. But of course there is at least a small gender divide, am I wrong?
DSL: I don't think there's anything inherently fun in the scratch-offs. There was one point that I thought "Why bother, can't the cashier just scan the back and tell me what I won?"
Admittedly, that might have been due to the sheer quantity of tickets.
And, as for baseball, I don't know that it's genetic, per se, but there is definitely an argument for nurture. That explains the gender divide too -- some dads probably didn't spend the same amount of time playing ball or watching games with their daughters as they did -- or would have done -- with sons.
Dara, clearly you didn't get much out of it, but that doesn't mean others don't either. Kind of like baseball.
Perhaps I shouldn't say gender; perhaps I should say testosterone level.
DSL: I'm not speaking for others; I'm speaking for me. I personally disagree with the view that lottery tickets are fun, but others might think so. This happens on occasion. For example, I don't think that fishing is fun, but many people would disagree. And many people do not find a trip to the outlet mall as entertaining as I do. So be it.
As for the baseball/gender link, I think testosterone level is clearly inaccurate. I like baseball, and I'm a girl. My sister likes baseball. Heck, even my mom and Nana like baseball (as long as they don't have to watch it on the tv all day). My brother, on the other hand, does not particulary care for baseball, although his friends have purportedly forced him to sit through the occasional Cubs game. And we have several female friends who like the sport.
To clarify, my theory is really that your family raises you to like or not like baseball. And you're a good example: You don't particularly like baseball, and from what you've said, your dad seems to loathe it. Voilà.
It's the same old debate. I still go for the genes as having the greater affect. We just disagree.
There are varying degrees of testosterone and estrogen within females and males. I think one could argue that we are genetically different besides both being female.
My dad just doesn't care for watching baseball. We used to play softball in the backyard. And he used to watch the 49ers all the time, not to mention basketball. I sometimes watched it with him. I think you're making assumptions about my childhood. It just didn't rub off on me. And my older sister enjoys watching baseball. She's a big Red Sox fan.
I'm not making assumptions about your childhood, I'm going based on what you've said in the past.
The fact that your sister likes baseball -- and that my brother doesn't -- goes against a pure testosterone/estrogen theory. And agreed, genetics encompasses a whole lot more than that. But, in my personal opinion, I give more credit to how (and maybe even where) I was raised.
When I was growing up in New Jersey, my dad and grandfather -- not to mention uncles and cousins -- often had baseball on tv in the house. During a large portion of the year, it was inescapable -- not just an occasional viewing. Plus, we had the Mets in '86, which was when they won the World Series, and I first remember going to games.
And my cousins and sister and I all played little league.
When we moved to Florida -- in my brother's formative years -- my family was in Massachusetts and New Jersey, and my dad wasn't around that much, since he did consulting out of town. We had no major league team down there until my brother was 13 or 14 years old, and he didn't play little league. So my brother never really got a chance to acquire a taste for the sport.
All things being equal, I'm pretty confident that, even with my dad's love for the game, if I had grown up somewhere where they didn't televise baseball -- like Israel or somewhere in Europe -- I probably wouldn't like it as much as I do.
Another way of looking at it is this: I like college football because I went to school in Gainesville and Tallahassee. It's like a religious cult in both places. If I had gone to school in Boston, I probably would have become a Sox fan like my cousins and your sister -- but I would have no clue about football.
Alright, it's your blog.
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