Estimated Time to a Theater Near You: Five Years

A woman who grew up in a Laotian orphanage in the turbulent 1960s and '70s won a $55 million lottery jackpot. She's pledging to donate her money to the orphanage and go back to Laos to track down her birth parents, who she's never met.

While this is a charming story, once again we deify the winners of gambling. Rarely do stories about parents who blow their last buck on lotto instead of dinner make the front page. Anyone who's been to a horse track, or jai alai game, or Reno, can attest that gambling very rarely enhances one's life to this extent.