Birthdays!

I turned 16 today, which mainly involved a lot of my friends saying "happy birthday!" and me squealing "thanks!" and enveloping them in high-velocity hugs. These high velocity hugs pose a bit of an issue, as my lack of kinesthetic awareness leaves me rather accident prone. I managed to shoulder Red in the neck, and when I hugged Avon, my long, ungainly arms managed to knock into the blonde boy behind her. He gave us a very pissed off look. It was, all in all, rather comical.

The other thing I wanted to address today was a silly exercise in probability brought up by Kahuna, a boy in my United States History class. He claimed that if you have a 1/3 chance of being hit by a car, and a 1/3 chance of thinking about the car, then you should think about the car, because the chance of both thinking and being hit is only one ninth. I said that probability said so, but that didn't mean it would make a difference. Jeremy calmly informed us both that they were independent events with independent probabilities.

However, this still let me somewhat confused. Well before I was born, my father was in a plane crash. He was in a little airplane in Alaska, and since he had a pilot's license, he was sitting in the cockpit with the captain, who was showing off. Well, the showoff of a captain ended up crashing the plane into a mountain, breaking some bone in my father's girlfriend's back (she blamed my Dad, and immediately broke-up with him). However, the probability of him being in more than one plane accident is extremely small. Therefor, it makes sense for me to travel on airplanes with him, because the chance of a crash is reduced.

Clearly, probability is screwed.