Premonitions, the lottery, and statistics

An interesting post appeared yesterday over at Occult View.  Entitled, "If Psychic Ability Exists, Why Can't Anyone Predict Winning Lottery Numbers?", the post makes the claim that (1) psychic ability does exist, and (2) there have been people who have won the lottery based upon a premonition.  So, q.e.d., more or less.

As evidence, the author gives us three examples of people who allegedly won the lottery (or could have, in one case) because of precognition: Steve (dreamed of the numbers "2895," didn't play them, and six months later, those were the winning numbers); Frank (a friend of a friend who won a seven million dollar payout "around two decades ago" and "said he dreamed the winning numbers"); and Lillian (bought five Pick-Three tickets with the same three numbers, because she'd heard the numbers told to her by "a voice;" the tickets won, despite the fact that the odds were "one in a thousand").

So.  Where to start?

First, as a scientist, I must with some reluctance point out the quality of the evidence.  All of them are after-the-fact reporting -- the person had already won (well, other than Steve, who didn't even win), and reported afterwards that the numbers had come to them in a precognitive fashion.  So first, we run headlong into the problem with anecdotal reporting, which is the plasticity of the human memory and the unfortunate capacity of humans to make stuff up.

But let's assume, just for fun, that all three of these stories are true as written -- all three people did have some sort of hunch about the numbers ahead of time.  Does this constitute evidence for precognition?

Unfortunately, the answer is no.  I say "unfortunately" because it sure would be cool if it worked, wouldn't it?

Let's just look at the statistics first.

According to Matthew Sweeney, author of The Lottery Wars: Long Odds, Fast Money, and the Battle Over an American Institution, about $60 billion is spent annually on lottery tickets.  The number of tickets sold per year proved to be a hard number to find -- I'm not sure why -- but from a paper I looked at called How to Analyze the Lottery, by John Corbett and Charles Geyer, the number looked to be about 400 million annually.

Now, what about premonitions?  According to a 1987 survey conducted by researchers at the University of Chicago, 67% of adults report having "regular episodes of precognition."  The current population of the US stands at a little more than 311 million people, so if we assume that the rates of precognition haven't changed in the last thirty years, it means that something on the order of 100 million people experience regular, accurate precognitive events.

Now, I'm no statistician, but we're talking about very big numbers here, both of ticket sales and of precognition. And with all of those precognitives walking around, you're telling me that the best evidence you could find were (1) a guy who dreamed of four numbers, didn't buy a ticket, and they came up six months later, (2) a guy who "heard from a friend" that the friend had dreamed his winning numbers "a couple of decades ago," and (3) a woman who won a one-in-a-thousand Pick-Three lottery because she heard the numbers from "a voice?"  Given that 67% of Americans claim that they have been able to predict the future, you would think that guessing the correct numbers would happen so often that the lottery commission would go bankrupt from the number of winning tickets sold.

One possible objection to all of this might be that precognitives can't control what their episodes of precognition are about; i.e., they can't choose what their mysterious skill will predict next.  But doesn't this just make all of this a giant case of dart-thrower's bias -- people only remember the times when their hunches proved correct, and forget about all of the hundreds of times that they didn't?  In order to be fair, we'd have to have some sort of accurate way of estimating the number of people who dreamed numbers, were told them by "a voice," or just had a hunch, and didn't win.  And because no one tends to advertise it when that happens, it's impossible even to venture a guess.  But if I can indulge in a hunch of my own, here, I suspect that it occurs a lot -- far more often than such "precognitive events" actually predict the future.

So, that's our look at psychic abilities for today.  If any Skeptophile in the studio audience is good at statistics, let me know what you thought of my analysis, and whether you think my point stands; and if you know of a quantitative way of approaching these data, do post it in the comments section.  Because, after all, the last thing I want to do is to do the same thing that our friends at Occult View did, which is to throw around a few numbers, tell a few stories, wave their arms around, and state a conclusion as if it were self-evident.

Atheism, agnosticism, and degrees of certainty

Friday's post -- about a commentator who claims to be an atheist, and yet states that she would not vote for an atheist -- provoked a lot of thoughtful commentary from my readers.  One email came from a gentleman named John DeLorez, who writes over at The Science of Metaphysical and Occult Philosophy.

John and I have corresponded before, and while (as you might guess from the name of his blog) we disagree in substance more often than we agree, he is a thoughtful and skilled writer and our e-conversations have never failed to get me thinking.  (And you should definitely check out his blog when you have a chance; it's worth a read.)  And regarding Friday's post,  he had (amongst other things) the following to say:

I know that you claim the title of atheist, but based upon your frequent statements similar to the one you made today, "I think that the religious view of the world is unsupported by the available evidence," I view you more of an Agnostic, than an Atheist.  Given proof in a form that you could except you would be willing to at least consider a change in belief.  It has been my experience that a dedicated atheist is unwilling to even consider any view other than their own.

I thought this comment was well-taken, and deserved some consideration not only as a response to John, but also to clarify this point to the rest of my readers, because I think it's a common misunderstanding.

The word agnostic literally means "one who does not know" (from the Greek a- "not" + gnosis "knowledge").  And in the strictest sense of the word, I'm an agnostic about everything.  A skeptic -- and all true scientists should be skeptics -- is never sure.  My training and background in biology focused heavily on genetics, so I consider that to be an area in which I am (to some extent) an expert.  Could my understanding of genetics be substantially wrong?  Of course.  What would it take for me to jettison what I thought to be true about genetics, and adopt a different model?  New, reliable data, from peer-reviewed sources, that lead to the inescapable conclusion that the previous model is incorrect.

So, in that sense, just as I am an agnostic (and not certain) in the realm of science, I am an agnostic (and not an atheist) with regards to the existence of a deity.  However, there is one thing that the previous paragraph ignores, and that is the likelihood that a particular hypothesis, theory, or model is correct.  And that's where the confusion comes in.

To take my previous example, what is the likelihood that our current model of genetics is wrong?  I would place that probability as so close to zero as to make no difference.  Genetics as a theory has been so extensively researched, using so many different modalities, and the mountain of data thus generated has been so thoroughly reviewed and cross-checked, that it is about as rock-solid an edifice as any I can think of.  (And sad to say for the young-earth creationists, but the same is true about the evolutionary model.)  So while a hair-splitter might still say that I am "an agnostic with respect to genetics," I am so close to certainty that one might as well call me certain.

All of this puts me in mind of a very old joke, which will probably only be funny to people who are (like me) old.  In bygone days, a young man was taking a math test, and was using his slide rule to perform calculations.  He was working on a problem that required him to multiply two times three, and he began frantically to work his slide rule.  "Let's see..." he mumbled to himself.  "Two... times three... is...  5.9999... oh, hell, let's just call it 6."

So, anyway, you can see where all of this is headed.  What about the existence of god?  Of course I consider my lack of belief as subject to revision.  If, like Moses, I was fortunate enough to have Yahweh speak to me from a Bush That Burned But Was Not Consumed, I would be forced to reconsider my position.  (And honesty demands that I would have somehow to be certain that there was no other explanation -- such as that I was having a hallucination, or that I was the victim of a prank.)  But assuming that I was reasonably sure that I wasn't delusional, and that no hoaxer had set me up, I would have no other choice but to change my stance.

As is, however, I see no evidence whatsoever that god exists.  If I had to place my degree of confidence in the existence of god, I'd have to put it lower than my degree of confidence in the existence of Bigfoot -- because honestly, there's more credible evidence for Bigfoot, in the form of tracks, sightings, and so on, than there is for god.  (As I've commented before, it seems to me that if a deity exists, wouldn't it result in the universe being left with some discernible, measurable trace of that deity's presence?  If there is such a trace, it's certainly escaped me.)

So, while technically I'm an agnostic, and would cheerfully revise my beliefs (after recovering from my shock and astonishment) should evidence for god appear, I'm close enough to the atheist end of the spectrum that it's easier just to refer to myself as such.  In the same sense that I'm an agnostic in the strict sense with regards to Yahweh, I'm also an agnostic with regards to Thor, Kuan Yin, Zeus, Apollo, and Brahma -- but I don't think that my degree of confidence in any of them is particularly lower than my degree of confidence in Yahweh.  So for all intents and purposes, I'm an atheist.

It's an interesting question to consider, however, and I thank John for bringing it up.  And as I said, you really should check out his blog.  Even the heartiest skeptic needs to have his/her views questioned -- and not infrequently.  Keeps us honest.

An atheist who wouldn't vote for atheists?

A news story today has me puzzled, but being that it appeared in Glenn Beck's online news source The Blaze, perhaps that's not to be wondered at.

In this story, S. E. Cupp, a commentator who writes for The Blaze, states for the record (in an interview with MSNBC) that she is an atheist -- but then says that she wouldn't vote for one.

Cupp was describing her support for Mitt Romney, and was asked if she would still vote for Mitt Romney if he were an atheist.  "No," she said.  "Because he would have no chance."

Well, okay, I guess that falls into the "don't bother voting for someone who is clearly going to lose anyway," department, which I suppose I can understand.  But then Cupp went further:

"And you know what?" she said. "I would never vote for an atheist president. Ever. Because I do not think that someone who represents 5 to 10 percent of the population should be representing and thinking that everyone else in the world is crazy, but me."

Well, I'm an atheist, and I don't exactly thing that "everyone else in the world is crazy but me."  I think that the religious view of the world is unsupported by the available evidence, which isn't exactly the same thing, is it?  For me, I'm perfectly willing to have a religious president -- unless part of his/her religion requires proselytizing of unbelievers (which, of course, a lot of them do).  I would like to think that the opposite would be true -- that a qualified atheist would, in the eyes of the religious, be fine, unless (s)he were foisting atheism upon the rest of the world.

Cupp continued, "The other part of it — I like that there is a check, OK? That there‘s a person in the office that doesn’t think he’s bigger than the state.  I like religion being a check and knowing that my president goes home every night addressing someone above him and not thinking all the power resides right here… Atheists don’t have that."

Again... atheists don't think the power resides with them.  I think Cupp may be confusing "atheism" with "megalomania."  And honestly, what she accuses atheists of is exactly why the idea of an extremely devout president gives me pause -- it's because the extremely devout think they're in touch with a bigger power that is above them, and they know what that power wants them to do.  It's the certainty that always makes me shudder, the starry-eyed statement "I'm doing god's will."

All of this makes me wonder how well Cupp understands what atheism actually is.  The darker side of my brain wonders if she actually is telling the truth about being an atheist; frankly, it's hard for me to see Glenn Beck hiring an atheist as one of his personal spokesmen.   But even if she is an atheist, she's not a very clear-thinking one -- which, as I said, should come as no surprise given who she works for.

Magnetic portals, and the trouble with catchy names

Sometimes scientists can be their own worst enemies.

Please note that I am saying this with a great measure of affection; I have the utmost respect for the way in which pure research has allowed us to understand our universe.  But in trying to bring their research to the masses, scientists inevitably have to dumb down what they've discovered.  Most scientific discoveries are couched in abstruse mathematics that is incomprehensible to anyone without an advanced degree in the field, and strewn with specialized vocabulary that the majority of us don't know.  So in order to give us non-scientists a glimpse of the amazing worlds that scientists view head-on, they have to find ways to communicate their knowledge accurately, but simply.

But in the desire to make their research catchy, and attractive to the media (and media consumers), they often give their discoveries clever names.  And that's when they get into trouble.

Look at "The God Particle," which was the subject of yesterday's post.  Leon Lederman, the physicist who coined the Higgs boson's popular nickname in the title of his book, The God Particle: If the Universe is the Answer, What is the Question?, has lived to regret his choice of words after the nickname of the recently-discovered particle has been taken literally by countless woo-woos, religious folks, and people who simply don't understand physics.  (Lederman famously quipped that he really wanted to call it "the goddamn particle" but doubted that his publisher would have allowed it.)

Today, we have another example of this phenomenon, with the announcement by scientists at NASA of the discovery of a phenomenon that has been nicknamed a "magnetic portal."  Before I tell you what it actually is, here are the responses to the discovery from a few websites:

"Science-fiction writers have toyed with the concept of a portal for many years, and scientists have been trying to discover such a structure in real life.  A new study backed by NASA has revealed the existence of a so-called magnetic portal, connecting the atmospheres of the Earth and the Sun.  Usually, a portal is defined as an opening through spacetime that enables a traveler to move over great distances, or over time, instantly. In other words, it represents a shortcut, or maybe a guiding pathway to a particular destination."

"Presently there are over 100,000 magnetic portals in existence on Earth with 40% of them located over large bodies of water. Magnetic portals all lead into another dimension. When you find one, you can step in and out quickly and nothing will happen. However, when you step in and have the courage to go all the way through, you will find yourself in a different dimension."

"Visualize the magnetic portal connection as a large umbilical cord tethering the Sun and Earth together allowing varying amounts of magnetized subatomic particles to pass from highly-charged areas (the Sun) to lesser-charges areas (the Earth) on regular eight-minute cycles. The slightly-smaller portal connection attaches, detaches and reattaches to our planet due to regular Earth rotation at just about 1000 miles per hour. The magnetic portal connection has a series of internal conduits that are active and inactive with a percentage of active conduits depending upon proximity to the Sun. In other words, the highest percentage of internal conduits are actively transferring magnetism through the magnetic portal, when the Earth is in perihelion position nearest the Sun. The lowest percentage of active conduits is present when the Earth is on the far side of the orbit in aphelion position farthest away from the Sun.  And it won't come as any shock to you to hear that the highest percentage of active conduits is predicted to occur on December 21, 2012."

And so forth and so on.  "Portal" means "doorway;" so laypeople are perhaps to be forgiven if they immediately assume that the "magnetic portals" discovered by NASA's research team, led by Jack Scudder, are going to be some kind of Deep Space 9-style wormhole through space.

However, if you actually read the press release from NASA, you find that the reality is that the "portals" are simply places where the magnetic fields of the Earth and the Sun intersect, creating a gap that allows highly-charged particles to strike the Earth's upper atmosphere.  So the only thing that will be passing through these "conduits" are particles in the solar wind -- a phenomenon of interest to atmospheric scientists, physicists, agencies that operate communications satellites, and possibly folks who like to watch the aurora borealis.

So why did they pick the word "portal?"  Probably because the other names -- "electron diffusion regions" and "flux transfer events" -- aren't nearly as sexy.  To be fair, the name "portal" is technically accurate (in that it's a gap allowing something in), but you know it was going to be misleading.  Even the NASA-created video (which you can watch here) starts out talking about science fiction and "extraordinary openings in space or time."  As soon as I saw the first fifteen seconds of the video, I did a facepalm, because I knew how it was going to be interpreted by people who already had a woo-woo view of the universe.  It took me about another fifteen seconds to find the three websites I quoted above.  And those were three of thousands.  The whole "portal" thing has the UFO/aliens/alternate universes/extra dimensions crowd leaping about making excited little squeaking noises, making me wonder if they got beyond the first fifteen seconds of the NASA video.

So, anyway.  Why do scientists do things like this?  I suppose it's to give their discoveries a certain cachet among the non-scientist multitudes.  The problem is, it so often backfires -- as it did with Lederman's "God Particle," and even as the choice of the term "global warming" for planetary climate change did, giving non-climatologists the erroneous idea that anthropogenic climate change would trigger a smooth, steady rise in temperature everywhere simultaneously.  I understand the necessity of bringing scientific research to the masses, and I applaud the work of popularizers like Neil deGrasse Tyson, Brian Greene, Michael Shermer, and (in the previous generation) Carl Sagan and Jacques Cousteau.  However, the inevitable simplification necessary to allow non-scientists to understand complex research engenders a responsibility that they watch their wording of things carefully -- the intent to explain can very quickly devolve into an accidental muddying of the waters.

The Higgs boson visits Atlantis

Well, the Higgs boson is apparently a reality, a finding that had one CERN researcher stating to reporters, "A lot of bets are going to be settled up today."  The likelihood that the particle observed in two separate experiments, CMS and ATLAS, was the Higgs was placed at 99.9999%, which seems like pretty good odds to me.  (Source)

The finding is a major vindication for the Standard Model, the theory that describes how particles interact, generating fields, forces, and a variety of other phenomena, and will surely be the springboard to launch a whole new set of experiments designed to expand what we know about physics.

Unfortunately, it has already been the springboard for a variety of Non-Standard Models by woo-woos who take the Higgs boson's nickname ("The God Particle") far too literally.  And it didn't help that within the past few weeks we have had announcements from two other fields, Mayan archaeology (the discovery of a text that allegedly confirms the calendar "end date" of December 21, 2012) and paleoclimatology/geology (a seafloor survey that describes the topography of "Doggerland," the land mass that spanned what is now the southern North Sea between Britain and Denmark when the sea level was lower, during the last ice age).

Maybe you'll see where this is going when I tell you that the media has already nicknamed Doggerland "Atlantis."  (Sources here and here)

So.  Yeah.  Higgs boson + Mayans + Atlantis = WHOA.  And if you add the Easter Island statues into the mix, we just have a coalescence of woo-woo-ness that makes you wonder why we don't just have a Celestial Convergence right here in our living rooms, just from reading about it.

Regular readers of Skeptophilia will not be surprised that the assembly of these four unrelated topics together into some kind of Cosmic Hash is the brainchild of frequent flyer Diane Tessman, who has written about it here.  Ms. Tessman starts off with a little bit of self-congratulation:

It’s been a week of exciting, dynamic 2012 events! I made a prediction back in the early 1990s that archeological discoveries in the final phase of the Change Times would be landmark events that would answer long-unanswered questions.

I predicted that not only these landmarks were significant in themselves but they would be a catalyst for UFO disclosure, alien landings, and a change in reality-perception (level of consciousness) for all humankind.

Maybe my predictions expect too much to manifest from these pivotal archeological discoveries but this is not the time to be a skeptic, because after all, I was right about the astounding discoveries. We shall see about the rest of my predictions in the future.

Yup.  That we shall.

She then goes on to describe (1) how the discovery of mammoth bones, human artifacts, and terrestrial features like river beds on the North Sea floor shows that Atlantis is real, (2) the discovery that the Easter Island moai statues have bodies shows that UFOs are real, (3) the discovery of the new Mayan text shows that the whole Mayan prophecy nonsense is real, and (4) the discovery of the Higgs boson shows that God/Celestial Consciousness is real.  Or something like that.  With Diane Tessman, it's hard to tell, sometimes.  Here's what she had to say about the Higgs:

So, science has confirmed what spiritual people knew all along: There is a God Spark, a God particle. Of course many people feel “it” (he/she/it) is within us, not out there in the universe of physics. Truth might be, it is everywhere, just as sub-atomic particles are everywhere and just as consciousness itself is everywhere. The universe is consciousness!

Yup, I'm sure that's what the physicists at CERN are saying today.  "Wow, I'm glad we showed that the Higgs exists.  But after all, I felt it all around me, all the time, because, you know, consciousness.  And god.  And everything.  So we really didn't need to do that experiment, we could have just experienced the Higgs."

I get kind of hot under the collar when people who don't understand science hijack discoveries made by actual trained, working scientists for their own silly purposes.  It misleads, it muddies the water, and (worst) it cheapens the years of work done by the people who are some of the clearest thinkers in the world.  I'll be the first to admit that I understand only the vaguest, shallowest bits of the Standard Model and how the Higgs boson fits into it; but then, I don't go pontificating to my readers about what it all means as if I were a physicist.

Okay.  I should just calm down a little, because (after all) it's not like the scientists at CERN (or the geologists who are studying Doggerland, or any other working researchers) are losing much sleep over Ms. Tessman and her ilk.  So, I guess, let her have her spiritual quantum-physics-powered UFOs from Atlantis, or whatever the hell it is she believes in.  Me, I'm just going to have another cup of coffee and read some more press releases from the physicists, because however you interpret it, you have to admit that this stuff about the Higgs boson is pretty freakin' cool.

Jesus saves: the role of money in belief

Every once in a while, while considering topics for Skeptophilia, I run into a belief, claim, or point of view that is so completely foreign to my way of thinking that when I first read about it, I can barely even understand it. 

Please note that I am not talking about the usual run of things that form the basis of most of my posts here.  While I am an atheist, I can certainly understand the appeal of there being a deity watching over us, and that the events around us have meaning and purpose.  My inclination is to believe that there are no such things as ghosts, but I see why people are fond of the idea, being that winking out like a candle flame when you die seems kind of... grim.  Less seriously, I get why people like the idea of there being odd, mysterious creatures in the world, such as Bigfoot, Nessie, El Chupacabra, the Bunyip, and the rest of the gang.

But yesterday, a friend and frequent Skeptophilia contributor sent me an article from the Phnom Penh Post (heaven alone knows how he found it, he lives in Minnesota) that reflects an approach to knowledge, understanding, and the universe that at first I found bafflingly incomprehensible.

The article is entitled "Ethnic Minority Turn To Jesus As More Affordable Option."  Apparently, in a village in Ratanakkiri District, Cambodia, there has been a mass conversion to Christianity -- not because they decided it was true, but because it's... cheaper.

Somkul village, inhabited by people of the Jarai ethnic group, have traditionally held a combination of Buddhist and animist beliefs.  And amongst these beliefs was that if a relative fell ill, the only way to free him from the clutches of the evil spirits causing the disease was to slaughter a buffalo, at a cost of about US$500.

Apparently, some years ago, missionaries appeared, and told the villagers about Christianity.  When the villagers found out that all you had to do was put a little money in the collection plate every Sunday, and when you got ill, you pray to Jesus, they said, "Heck yeah, that sounds like a much better deal!"

Sev Chel, a 38 year old woman from Somkul, told reporters how before her conversion, an illness cost her a bundle to pay for the buffalo, chickens, rice wine, and all of the other stuff necessary for the ritual.

"So if I sold that buffalo and took the money to pay for medicine, it is about 30,000 riel to 40,000 riel [for them to] get better, so we are strong believers in Jesus," she said.  "If I did not believe in Jesus, maybe at this time I would still be poor and not know anything besides my community."

Kralan Don, 60, agrees.  "We believe in Christianity because we are poor; we don’t have money to buy buffaloes, chickens and pigs to pray for the spirits of the god of land or the god of water when those gods make us get sick," he said.

Okay, now wait just a moment, here.  You believe in Jesus' power to make you well not because you think it's real, but because it's cheaper?

At first, I thought, "Well, okay, maybe they believe both in Jesus and in their old gods and spirits and so on, but have switched to worshiping Jesus because they think he's more powerful -- and also, as an added benefit, less demanding in a monetary sense."  But no: the article makes a strong point that the villagers understand perfectly well that Christianity is strictly monotheistic, and that in order to adhere to it, they have to accept that their old beliefs were simply wrong.

So, I'm forced to the conclusion that these people have decided what they believe purely based on selfish motives -- not whether it makes sense, nor whether it's appealing, nor based on their interpretation of the available evidence, all of which are motives that I can understand.  They have decided that something is true solely because it is in their best financial interest to do so.

Anyhow, I was sitting here this morning, pondering this, and all of a sudden, I had a chilling thought; how is this so very different to our approach to hydrofracking?  For those of you who don't live in natural-gas-rich parts of the United States, and are unfamiliar with this gas extraction technique, it is a method that involves pumping up groundwater, adding various chemicals to it (the makeup of most of these chemicals falls under the "proprietary information" laws and has not been made public), and then forcing it back into wellheads under pressure to shatter rock strata and make gas easier to remove.  The anti-fracking movement claims that the process has contaminated groundwater (including that used for drinking water), caused environmental damage, and might even be responsible for triggering earthquakes.  Fracking advocates say that none of that is true, that the process is completely safe.

And who, exactly, are the advocates of fracking?  The ones who stand to make money from gas leases.  The places you see lots of pro-fracking signs in people's yards are almost entirely poor communities whose economies would be boosted, at least in the short term, by gas revenue.  So these folks believe that the natural gas companies' claims that hydrofracking is safe are true not because they have been demonstrated to be true -- they believe because it is in their financial best interest to believe.

And suddenly, the conversion of the Jarai didn't seem so baffling, after all.

A few thoughts about loss

I lost a good friend two days ago to one of those lightning-fast, unpredictable deaths that leave us all reeling, wondering how someone so vital, so apparently healthy, could suddenly be gone.  Diana, a 47-year-old history teacher at my school, was driving home on the last day of school, and apparently felt ill and pulled her car over to the side of the road.  She was later found there, unconscious.  She had suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage from which she died eight days later.

I am not a person who forms friendships easily, something about myself I don't like and don't completely understand, but Diana was someone who reached out to me pretty much from the moment she was hired, about twelve years ago.  I've taught two AP classes (biology and environmental science) for more years than I will willingly admit, and when Diana was assigned to teach AP World History, she actively solicited advice from her colleagues who had more experience than she did in these college-level curricula.  This began a friendship that expanded into a shared interest in human ecology (and the writing of Jared Diamond), medieval European history, music, and fiction.  About a month ago, she read one of my novels, and liked it so much she was pushing me to write a sequel (which I have actually begun to work on); and my fiction inspired her to try her hand at writing.  The last week of school she sent me the first ten pages of a historical novel, which was compelling and well-written, and said she was going to work on it more this summer.

The best-laid plans of mice and men, Robert Burns famously said, gang aft agley.  Or as Thomas à Kempis put it, "Man proposes, God disposes" -- an aphorism I agree with in principle, if not in literal detail.  We plan our lives far in advance -- taking an Alaskan cruise in summer of 2014, going to China after we retire, and so on.  If anyone asked, we'd say that of course we know that it might not happen; any number of circumstances, up to and including death, could intervene.  But we have to keep planning, somehow, even in that knowledge.  Funny creatures, humans.

When I posted on Facebook that Diana had fallen grievously ill, and then that she had died, this elicited an outpouring of sympathy that was truly amazing.  I was the recipient of well-wishes and words of comfort from hundreds of people.  All of this has left me pondering how I can wrap my mind around the concept of death and loss.  Is there a way to fit this into the context of the understandable?

Of course, being an atheist and a rationalist, I don't have recourse to the supernaturalist claim that even tragic events like this one somehow fit into God's plan for the world.  That comfort is beyond my reach, and (to my mind) never sounded like much more than an equivocation to me in any case.  You'll hear the devout say that sure, some good, kind, honest people die young, and some unkind, greedy, cruel people live long, prosperous lives, but still it is all part of the divine purpose.  To me, this says no more, really, than "we don't know why but would like to think there's a reason, because it sure seems like a crappy outcome to us."  On the other hand, the opposite end of the philosophical spectrum -- that unexpected deaths just happen, and mean no more than a bug hitting a windshield -- seems so bleak as to leave me wondering, "Why bother at all?"

After a couple of days of mulling the whole thing over, I think I've finally realized that what matters is how we change the world.  I'm not talking about big changes, necessarily; people like Wangari Maathai, a hero of mine who died last year, are sadly few (and if you don't know who this amazing woman is, go here and prepare to be awed by what one dedicated human being can accomplish).  What I'm talking about is the personal legacy of friendships that you leave.  Who have you taught, learned from, connected with, treated with kindness?  Who have you cared for or received care from?  Whose life have you, through your attention, made a little more beautiful, a little less painful?

I don't, honestly, have the need to have it all make sense.  My belief is that in the common definition of the word, it doesn't make sense.  Death comes for us all eventually, an idea I don't find frightening so much as incomprehensible.  Maybe we're not built to think long about the big existential questions; what matters most is the here and now, how we can live our lives and care for the ones around us.  The lesson I took from Diana's death is to make every day count, because you never know how many you have left.  Hug your children, your significant other, your family members, your pets -- hell, hug total strangers if you want to, because this world has too damn much pain and uncertainty and not nearly enough love and comfort.  Take care of yourselves and the people in your life.  Be kind to each other, even little kindnesses like letting someone go ahead of you in the checkout line at the grocery store.  And in the end, if your life can end with people getting together -- as I did the evening after I learned of Diana's death -- and holding up a glass of their favorite libations, and saying a few words of thanks for how you made their world a better place, you will have done what you could.