the klog

So I listen to this local college radio station KSCU (103.3 Santa Clara) a lot. Every day on my drive to and from work, for about a two-block span, the station gets inexplicably replaced (via interference) by what sounds like Fox News. I have yet to figure out what exact station it is, or whether it's a pirate station or what. All I know is that it's almost always pundits talking, and I've heard O'Reilly on occasion.

Anyway, what amuses me is that when I drive through this two-block span, my radio fades from music, to news/punditry, and then back to music. Sometimes I can hear both at the same time (along with static) for a while. The effect is very similar to all those movies about the 60s/70s that inevitably contain a montage scene with scattered news reports over music that represents the soul of the era! or something.

Wednesday night, the pundits were talking about H. Clinton's New Hampshire victory over Obama when the radio faded back to KSCU playing a reggae song that went, "I'm gonna send him to outer space to find another race". And I was like, "Whoa! What synchronicity! I'm totally gonna blog this!" But then the next line was, "I'm gonna put on an ironed shirt and chase the devil out of Earth." And I was like, "Oh, now it's not as appropriate, because I'd be calling Obama the devil, and I don't want to do that. Oops. I guess I can't blog about it after all." (I guess technically I'd be saying that Clinton's calling Obama the devil, but I don't want to do that, either. :P)

My change of heart led me to think about how often events of synchronicity like that lead people to believe in supernatural connections and whatnot, but then if it turns out not to be appropriate, they'll just forget about the whole thing and move on. Selection bias Confirmation bias, etc. (Btw, thanks to Paul for reminding me of the term "selection bias". (Update: And thanks again for correcting it to "confirmation bias" in the comments below.) I had been calling it "the positive evidence fallacy", but then when I searched for ["positive evidence fallacy"], the only result was one of my own blog posts. :P)

So this is my attempt to avoid selection bias and blog the event even though it didn't turn out perfectly. I guess I also just really wanted to share the amusing synchronicity of that first line, even though the rest of the song didn't work. :) Btw, the song is "I Chase the Devil" by Max Romeo.