fifty_fifty_odds birdmad 100 yeasr ago, the chance of an apocalyptic catastrophe were calculated at 20% (though agaisnt what scale, i do not know) a recent Reuters article suggests that either nature in some fashion, bioterror or bio-error has moved the odds to 50% destructive little creatures, aren't we. 030611 ... god i figger thee odds be fifty-fifty i might just have something to say 030612 ... ovenbird In the aftermath of his scrape with death my father visited his doctor. “It’s a miracle you’re standing here in my office!” the doctor said. “Your chances of surviving were probably about fifty-fifty.” The doctor seemed to want dad to feel the full gravity of the situation, as if he wanted dad to feel he’d been given a rare gift in being allowed to live. “I never felt like I was close to death,” dad said later. And it strikes me that we almost never do, feel close to death, that is, even though we are born holding hands with death, even though it is our constant shadow and companion, even though I have sometimes thought to take that hand to my lips and kiss it. We never really understand the odds in this life. The odds of death finding me are 100 percent, yet I still can’t quite believe that. The odds of my being here at all are so miniscule as to be effectively zero and I can’t quite believe that either. I shouldn’t exist in this moment, in this exact genetic configuration, with this particular mind, at all. And so the very fact of my living and the possibility of meeting other beings who also have a nearly zero chance of being here is a cosmic miracle that I bump into every day. What are the odds that I get to live into tomorrow? What about the next day? What are the chances that I will be eating a fried egg and a piece of toast with marmalade while the morning sun dances in the kitchen when I’m 95? What are the odds that when death comes for me I’ll be able to meet him with equanimity, and say without a shred of doubt, “I’m ready”? 250509 what's it to you? who go blather from