What are the odds that the incomparable James Randi would upload a video to YouTube about a crazy coincidence? Well, considering the source, I imagine quite high. Regardless, this is fun, so we just had to share it with you.
Category: Videos
Honestly, I think I’ll let this one speak for itself:
When one tracks enough of the details you can figure out that with two right-handed batters in a row, the odds weren’t too extreme that they’d both hit the ball into roughly the same left-field area. So since they DID manage to hit two home-runs in a row (unsure how often this happens… anyone?), that would probably make it unusual if they DIDN’T end up within a similar range. But it’s still some pretty solid dedication on the part of the fan, plus some notable dexterity to pull this off while clutching the first ball in his hand, to catch both.
btw, this was the first batter’s first career homer, and the fan was nice enough to offer him the ball after the game. He also gave the second ball to his buddy who provided the tickets and talked him into attending. Sounds like a pretty nice guy had a heck of a day to me.
One of the great comedy schools/troops in LA is the Groundlings. We have friends in the group, and a few of us visited one of their shows last year and caught the following sketch which just fit our site TOO perfectly to be a… well, you know…
This sketch actually touches perfectly on what we run into when we look at a fun set of coincidences, or synchronicity, and start overanalyzing it. How far do you have to stretch to find the similarities, and at what point do you cut them off? One of the characters is straight, one gay, and something tells me Julian is ambidextrous*, so for the characters that seemed like a natural point to draw the line. But they could have drawn it sooner if they wanted to be much more technical. I mean, sure, they all had iPhones, but were they all iPhone 4s? Julia’s appeared to be white on the back, and as any self-respecting geek knows, the iPhone 4 wasn’t released in white until this year, branding Julia as a witch who must be burned at the stake an outlier from the pattern they were searching for much earlier than the moment their love lives came into play.
Simply enough, craziness like this happens all the time when we’re looking for it, and is easy to tear apart when we want to. The real trick is in finding the fun in it no matter what, and not letting it color your view of the world or the people around you. You see it when people who have the same religion analyze their same book differently, or two members of the same political party can ascribe to completely different ideals. In the real world these tiny lines drawn in the sand over what point we consider incredibly similar people to be outsiders can lead to massive issues. But personally, I’m going to stick to my world, where these lines lead to sketch comedy, laughs, and racial stereotyping that’s funny because we’re not racist. We swear.
