Winning the lottery: This guy didn’t need AI. Just math and a pile of money
Beating a lottery has been done, and it was done with a printing press. Stefan Mandel, a Romanian-born mathematician, won 14 jackpots by covering as many…
Author: Rick Good
Rick Good spent ten years in the newspaper business, including with The News & Observer (Raleigh, NC) and The Greenville News (Greenville, SC). He co-wrote, with Melinda Coleman, Rutledge to Riley: Governors of South Carolina, 1776–Present (Published by The Greenville News), and is the author of Mind Games Trivia #1 (Amazon). He has recently spent 15 years creating original trivia content through Sounds Good Mobile Entertainment and continues that with his new company, SGME Software. He edits The Smart Reader's money, real estate, and business coverage.
Orcas have fads. One is sinking boats.
In the summer of 1987, a female killer whale in Puget Sound began swimming with a dead salmon balanced on her head. Within weeks, orcas in two neighboring…
Can AI predict lottery numbers? Here’s what AI says
An infomercial ran a full half hour. Artificial intelligence can predict winning lottery numbers, it promised, and the service is yours for $197. There is…
When your phone no longer recognizes your fingerprint
Sooner or later the phone stops cooperating. You press the button the way you always have, and nothing happens. Press again. Nothing. It is easy to…
Bunco went straight
Walk into a senior community on game night and you may hear a bell ring, followed by someone shouting “Bunco!” It is one of the most sociable games going….
Why bunco works when other games don’t
Ask anyone who runs activities at a senior community why bunco keeps filling the room, and the answer is usually the same. Nobody has to be good at it….
One Open Enrollment caution
Every fall some people leave a Medicare Advantage plan, return to Original Medicare, and then find they cannot buy the supplement policy they assumed was…
Something was moving inside his helmet
A Maumelle High School football player in Arkansas had been practicing for close to an hour when he felt something shifting inside his headgear. He handed…
Your student can use AI for this task
By now you might have received a paper from your kid’s school, asking you to pledge that he or she not use AI in homework. But here is a task that can be…
The bond that doesn’t need you to like it
You can quit a family. It just doesn’t work. Cornell sociologist Karl Pillemer ran the first large national survey on family estrangement and found that…