Lottery Post Journal

There is a CD you buy that will take you to another place — a place of wonderful, harmonious music.

Philip Glass is one of the great classical piano composers and performers, and his Solo Piano album continues to be one of the single-greatest works of his.

It is perfect for when you want to listen to music — not just background music while you use the computer, read a book, or do some work — I'm talking about those times when you want to sit with your eyes closed and allow the music to take you wherever it goes.

Solo Piano is a succession of music that builds around a theme, and like most Philip Glass music it builds on the concept of repetition.  It is a meditative miracle.

If you have never listened to classical piano, there could be no better introduction.

You won't want it to end, and it leaves you in a contemplative mood.

(Click for more info)

It turns out that flipping a coin has all sorts of non-randomness:

Here are the broad strokes of their research:

1. If the coin is tossed and caught, it has about a 51% chance of landing on the same face it was launched. (If it starts out as heads, there's a 51% chance it will end as heads).
2. If the coin is spun, rather than tossed, it can have a much-larger-than-50% chance of ending with the heavier side down. Spun coins can exhibit "huge bias" (some spun coins will fall tails-up 80% of the time).
3. If the coin is tossed and allowed to clatter to the floor, this probably adds randomness.
4. If the coin is tossed and allowed to clatter to the floor where it spins, as will sometimes happen, the above spinning bias probably comes into play.
5. A coin will land on its edge around 1 in 6000 throws, creating a flipistic singularity.
6. The same initial coin-flipping conditions produce the same coin flip result. That is, there's a certain amount of determinism to the coin flip.
7. A more robust coin toss (more revolutions) decreases the bias.

The paper.