I didn't win the Powerball jackpot, and neither did you. To illustrate how hard it is to win, imagine you are attending a Powell County High School basketball game in the Rodney T. Clark Memorial Gymnasium. It's a packed house. The lower decks are full and so are the upper decks. On the way in the door, everyone puts their name in a hat. Luckily somone draws out your name. Okay, now the very next night, you're in the same place, and unbelieveably, they draw your name again (wouldn't everyone just be sick of you by now?). The night after that, you and eleven other people, people who are just as incredibly, phenomenally lucky as you are, are each given a key, only one of which unlocks a safe with hundreds of millions of dollars in it, and you are the lucky guy. That's how lucky you have to be to win the Powerball. Yet another way to illustrate it is this. Imagine there is a football field sized piece of paper, and it's divided up into squares 7/32" on a side. A very tiny square, much smaller than the leavings of a hole punch. All these are thrown into a hat, and yours is chosen.

My daughter is already a philosopher. She told her grandmother that when she was a baby, she used to think that nothing was real, that perhaps even she was not real. Now that she's older, she's decided that she and the universe are real, or at least appear to be.