The Electron Pencil

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THE QUOTE

“Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.” — Bertrand Russell

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REALITY CHECK

Let’s get this out of the way right off the bat: There is no Sasquatch. AKA “Bigfoot,” the creature does not exist.

There are people who call themselves scientists — but who’ve abdicated their privilege to the title — who’d love to get you to believe nonsense.

Dr. Melba Ketchum: She’s Wrong — Trust Me

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Move on with your life. Ponder all the new exo-planets being discovered virtually every day. Stop running around and trying to do everything in the world by noon and listen to the birds in your neighborhood — all of whom are real. If you take a drive on SR 37, glance at the rock wall cutouts along the side of the road and, noting all the layers of sediment, consider that you’re actually looking at millions of years of history.

But, once again, push the notion of Bigfoot out of your mind.

Because if you do believe in Bigfoot, you are indeed out of your mind.

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LOTTERY LOSERS

Here’s another piece of advice. The next time there’s a ginormous Powerball payout, you will not win it.

Statistically Speaking, These People Do Not Exist

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Recent calculations indicate that the odds of winning the average Powerball prize are 1 in 175,223.510. And because last week’s half-billion-buck purse attracted so many new players, those odds shot upward.

So save your dough. Or better yet, just send it to The Electron Pencil; we’ll put it to better use than you blowing it on a racket in which your chance of winning, in essence, doesn’t exist.

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DOOM

Let’s stick with the bunk. Admit it, that whole 2012/End of the World thing rattles around in your braincase every once in a while.

The Mayan Calendar

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As we approach December 21st, the target date for all our lives to go kaputnik (don’t try to find a definition for this word, I just made it up), you can be sure our corporate media newsbeings will be covering this “story” with either a smug, knowing smirk or flat-out idiotic credulity.

I’m dying to see how Fox News covers the impending apocalypse.

To that end, NASA has issued an advisory explaining why our interpretation of the Mayan calendar is screwy. Here’s space scientist David Morrison explaining why you’re a loon if you give even an iota of credence to this end of the world scenario.

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Not that this well-thought-out, expert, fact-based argument will make a molecule of difference for the credulous.

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TRUST ME

Speaking of credibility, I have next to none left after announcing several baker’s dozen times the new Ryder website and the attendant marriage of this site with that one.

Swear to the god I don’t believe in we’re only days away from that long-awaited debut.

Almost There

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I know, I know — you don’t want to hear about the labor pains, you only want to see the baby, so I won’t tell you what an heroic ordeal it’s been to get this thing off the ground. My technical and diplomatic skills have been tested to the extreme, but winners never quit, or so said someone like Dick Nixon, who eventually quit anyway.

So stay tuned and we’ll be making our grand announcement before you know it.

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ONLY TRUST YOUR HEART

Believe Astrud.

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