Of Mice and Men - Munchies and Lotteries

“Work hard and become a leader; be lazy and become a slave.”

Cause-and-effect relationships, as this ancient proverb suggests, at least the normal associations with laziness, are not always, as it turns out, as they appear. 

At least not according to new research published in Newsmax Health as demonstrated by 32 female rats.

Sixteen rats ate carrots - or whatever unprocessed foods rats eat – and the other, you might call them the ‘sweet sixteen’ nibbled-them-slowly-feeling-like-royalty: ding dongs, donuts or had substituted some sort of “highly processed foods rich in sugar and saturated fat.”

As the increasingly fatter pack rats packed it in, they became less and less concerned about the lever – kind of like a slot machine - that dispensed those lovely icing-sprinkled nuggets.

I mean why, right? 

“Three months into the experiment, the researchers observed, unsurprisingly, that the rats on the junk food diet had grown significantly fatter than the others. The more interesting finding, however, was that these obese rats' performance of the lever task had become impaired, as they took much longer breaks than the lean rats between performing the task.”

As the multiplied munchies of the overgrown mice were diminished - being fat and happy and no longer famished; as the rodents reduced their repast to the barest of remnants and remains: their siestas became longer, maintaining their motivation shorter, and winning the rat race, well, why bother?

“The researchers indicate that the findings are very likely to apply to humans, whose physiological systems are similar to those of rats.”

As mice, so men.

People are not fat because they are lazy, basically was the conclusion drawn, but rather people are lazy because they are fat.

"We interpret our results as suggesting that the idea commonly portrayed in the media that people become fat because they are lazy is wrong,” said biologist Aaron Blaisdell at UCLA in California who led the study. 

“Our data suggest that diet-induced obesity is a cause, rather than an effect, of laziness. Either the highly processed diet causes fatigue or the diet causes obesity, which causes fatigue."

Sounds a lot like the lottery.

Government – a gambling predatory partner – is not supersized because it cannot manage its money, but rather government’s money that it supposedly manages – our money – is what makes it supersized. 

“Increasingly, government is,” writes John Stossel in an article entitled “Gambling is Legal Only When Govt Wins” published in Newsmax the day after this past April Fools’ Day.

What is odd is how bad are the odds of state-run lotteries.  Odder still is an elected official – or two or three - who “take money from taxpayers to advertise their scams,” says Stossel.

But perhaps oddest of all – as if that were possible in this analogy of rats and representatives – are those promoting in their states “commercials that mock hard work, pushing the benefits of a long-shot jackpot. Poor people become poorer, because they buy most of the lottery tickets. Then politicians brag how money from the lottery helps the poor. It's disgusting hypocrisy.”

A rat race, in other words.

What else do you call “Powerball” on Wednesdays and Saturdays; “Mega Millions” on Tuesdays and Fridays; “Lotto” on Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays; “Hit 5” on Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays; “Match 4” seven days a week; “Daily Keno” seven days a week, and “Daily Game” seven days a week?

Heck, “eight days a week is not enough to show I care,” by the Beatles, would work as the Washington State Lottery  theme-song and although the Lotto is basically playin’ it, residents evidently are not buyin’ it.   

House Bill 1982 in 2013 for example repealed the veteran’s portion of the lottery because “insufficient net revenue” was generated.

Evidently, the Beatles notwithstanding, you didn’t care – not enough - about your veterans.

Rats.

Apropos is the title “Of Mice and Men,” written by John Steinbeck, taken from Robert Burns’ poem “To A Mouse,” which read: “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Often go awry.”