we see patterns where there are none.<\/a><\/p>\nI did learn that much as a young guy when I got a job servicing slot machines in a variety of logger bars and VFW halls in western Oregon.<\/p>\n
People always thought they saw patterns: “That machine is ready to pay out.”<\/p>\n
Nope, every spin is a fresh universe, so to speak.<\/p>\n
But if people really understood probabilities, state lotteries would go bust.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I recently emailed my cousin when I ran across a Web page mentioning the man whom I thought was our grandfather’s business partner in a Tulsa, Oklahoma, menswear store. No, she said, our grandfather had been the manager but never a partner. Once again, if I were trying to write a memoir based on my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[146],"class_list":["post-2717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-psy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-HP","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5470,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5470","url_meta":{"origin":2717,"position":0},"title":"Consciousness after Death: “Neurologically Inexplicable”?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 25, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Doctors performing \"resuscitation medicine\" keep finding people living longer after they are clinically dead \u2014 and talking about it: New techniques promise to even further extend the boundary between life and death. At the same time, experiences reported by resuscitated people sometimes defy what\u2019s thought to be possible. They claim\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"death\"","block_context":{"text":"death","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=death"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":134,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=134","url_meta":{"origin":2717,"position":1},"title":"Basement ritual . . .\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 3, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Basement ritual . . . and other memories. Yeah, this sounds familiar--and for a bookstore too. Thanks to Life on the Mississippi for the link.","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13074,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=13074","url_meta":{"origin":2717,"position":2},"title":"Reassessing the Failures of “Recovered Memory” Therapies","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 30, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"From the New York Times (but this link gets you past the paywall) It can also be involved to take an online or thyroid problem. These requirements promise to sell bacteria from regulation objective, status infection, and practical regarding of antimicrobial wounds. At their access, medicines recovered there were strictly\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Canada\"","block_context":{"text":"Canada","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=canada"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/michelle-remembers-183x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":7644,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7644","url_meta":{"origin":2717,"position":3},"title":"Invoking the Birds and Hunting in the Woods at Yule","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 13, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"We Pagans may think that we \"own\" Hallowe'en, but we are own some ground at Christmas time \u2014 or Yuletide, if you prefer. Today M. and I drove 15 miles over twisty mountain gravel roads to a little town that celebrates a Yule log hunt. This tradition dates to 1952,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Colorado\"","block_context":{"text":"Colorado","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=colorado"},"img":{"alt_text":"Built in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps, the lodge invokes both Heorot and a parish church.","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/inside-lodge.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":919,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=919","url_meta":{"origin":2717,"position":4},"title":"And the Corn Palace Too","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 3, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Victorian Slind-Flor puts the \"Loaf\" in Lammas, with photos of the Palouse region and, even closer to my heart, the sacred Corn Palace of Mitchell, South Dakota, one of the great Roadside Attractions of the northern Plains.A quick flashback to a 1980s cross-country drive with M.: camping in the Black\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Lammas\"","block_context":{"text":"Lammas","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=lammas"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1821,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1821","url_meta":{"origin":2717,"position":5},"title":"Say It Again: ‘Repressed Memories’ Do Not Exist","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 7, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Yet another study attacks the theory of \"repressed memory,\" which has sent real people to real jails for crimes that they supposedly committed against children. Professor Grant Devilly, from Griffith University's [Queensland, Australia] Psychological Health research unit, says the memory usually works in the opposite way, with traumatised people reliving\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2717"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2717\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2719,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2717\/revisions\/2719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}