Well, Duh
The Tennessean reports that legislators have discovered lotteries are "big bidness." There's this one priceless anecdote from the story - priceless for what it says about the reporter.

Between touring the major vendors, lawmakers stopped at a downtown Atlanta convenience store, picked numbers on an $8 million Lotto South jackpot and bought holiday-themed scratch-off tickets. For many, that was the easy part. After scratching off his $5 ''Merry Money'' ticket, state Rep. Johnny Shaw, D-Bolivar, realized he didn't know how to tell if he won. ''I got to figure out how to do this,'' he said, chuckling. Rep. Charles Sargent, R-Franklin, bought $10 in tickets and won $4. ''A bad return,'' he surmised.

Surmised?

To surmise means to guess, deduce or infer. I doubt Rep. Sargent had to infer that spending $10 to get $4 was a bad bargain. Perhaps only the journalist had to think hard and guess that such a trade might be a bad deal. But, then, lots of folks go into journalism because they suck at math.

Meanwhile, Sen. Steve Cohen, prime sponsor of the constitutional amendment allowing the creation of a state lottery in Tennessee, also shows how bad he is at math:

''We knew how many states,'' he said of the 38 states that have lotteries, ''but when you see how many tickets are produced ... I mean, it's a billion-dollar business coming to Tennessee.''

No, Sen. Cohen, it is no that at all. It is a predatory business coming to Tennessee to take much of that billion dollars out of the productive Tennessee economy by convincing dunderheads to surmise day after day, week after week, month after month, that trading $10 for $4 or less or nothing at all on the beyond-miniscule chance they might get more is a good bargain, and so divert their money away from productive uses such as, oh, buying food for their family or another book to help their toddler learn to read, and use it instead to buy a piece of paper, scratch on it a bit and toss it in the trash and curse their "luck" when they should be cursing you.