A Skeptic analyzes coincidence…poorly

Posted on December 12, 2012 by Trish and Rob

 

Shermer & agent

 

Here’s an article about what many of our readers here would call an obvious synchronicity – a meaningful coincidence. But to arch-skeptic Michael Shermer, the fact that it’s an unusual experience, out-of-the-ordinary, is the very reason why he thinks there’s nothing significant about it. Read his synchro and follow his logic…or try to.

COINCIDENCES AND CERTAINTIES

by MICHAEL SHERMER, Dec 04 2012

On the morning of Friday, November 16, 2012, I wandered out of my hotel in Portland, Oregon—The Crystal Hotel, an exotic boutique hotel with rooms decorated in the theme of a musician, poet, or artist (I stayed in the Allen Ginsberg room staring at a portrait of the beat poet and realized why I write nonfiction). In search of breakfast, I could have turned left or right as I exited the lobby. I turned right. At the first intersection I could have continued straight, gone left, or gone right. I went left. There were breakfast restaurants on both the left and the right side of the street. I chose one on the right. The hostess asked if I wanted to be seated near the window or next to the wall. I chose the window. About half way through my breakfast I happened to look up to see a man walking by who looked familiar. He looked at me with similar familiarity. I waved him into the restaurant. He spoke my name in recognition. I stuttered and stammered and hemmed and hawed and finally admitted, “I’m sorry, but I can’t remember your name.”

He said, “Uh, Michael, it’s me, Scott Wolfman, your agent!”

After I recovered from my embarrassment and momentary fear that I’d never get another speaking engagement, we had a laugh about it all, but then got to thinking—what are the odds of something like this happening? I’m from Southern California and Scott is from Connecticut. And we happened to run into each other in Portland, Oregon, a city neither of us normally has any business being in. I was randomly walking about the town, as was Scott. We were stunned. It sure seemed like something more than a coincidence, and we both joked about how there must be some sort of scheduling god who makes these things happen.

But Scott and I are good skeptics. We know how to think about such events. Even though such coincidences as this really stand out as unusual—and they are when I describe it in this manner—most people forget to consider all the other possibilities: the thousands of people I know who didn’t happen by that diner, the delay at the diner talking to Scott when I might have left earlier and had something else unusual happen that now didn’t, all the other cities I’ve traveled to and dined in when I didn’t see anyone I knew, and so on. And the same for Scott: he has hundreds of clients and knows thousands of people in the lecture business, any one of which he would ever happen to bump into in any given city he happened to travel to, would stand out as unusual.

In other words, after the fact we construct all the contingencies that had to come together in just such a way for one particular event to happen, and then we only notice and remember (and later tell stories like the above) about the events that we noticed as extraordinary, and conveniently forget to notice all the other possibilities. Here’s an article opening you’ll never read:

“A remarkable thing happened to me this morning. When I went out for breakfast I didn’t see a single person I know.”

And yet I’ve had thousands of breakfasts just like this one in which I see nothing but strangers. And, of course, I don’t bother to take note of that uninteresting fact, and I do not give it a second thought. The main cognitive bias at work here is the hindsight bias.

The hindsight bias is the tendency to reconstruct the past to fit with present knowledge. Once an event has occurred, we look back and reconstruct how it happened, why it had to happen that way and not some other way, and why we should have seen it coming all along. Such “Monday-morning quarterbacking” is literally evident on the Monday mornings following a weekend filled with football games. We all know what plays should have been called…after the outcome. Ditto the stock market and the endless parade of financial experts whose prognostications are quickly forgotten as they shift to post-diction analysis after the market closes—it’s easy to “buy low, sell high” once you have perfect information, which is only available after the fact when it is too late. In this story, the hindsight bias was my noticing after the fact all the particularities that had to come together in just such a way for Scott and I to run into each other.

What would have been truly and extraordinarily beyond coincidence is if I had computed ahead of time the odds of running into my lecture agent at that very time and place, and then it happened. But that’s not what happened. My account here is a post-diction—an after-the-fact analysis—instead of a prediction. Unfortunately, most people who are not aware of such cognitive biases fail to consider all the other possibilities, and how the sum of all these possibilities is certainty—something must happen, and 99.99% of the things that happen are uninteresting and unimportant and so we don’t notice or recall them later. This cognitive shortcoming is, in part, the basis of a type of superstition and magical thinking that finds deep meaning in coincidence, while ignoring entirely the certainties that must happen according to the laws of nature and contingencies of history.

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Two things struck me about the logic of his argument. First, according to Shermer’s criteria, coincidences apparently aren’t meaningful to him because of all the times when life is ordinary, functioning on linear time and cause and effect – when there are not coincidences happening.  This seems a strange argument because obviously part of the magic is that such co-incidents DON’T happen all the time.

His second argument is even stranger and reveals a lack of understanding about the nature of synchronicity. Shermer says that people who believe in meaningful coincidence have a ‘hindsight bias.’ In other words, they figure out the synchro after it happens by retracing the events leading to it. Shermer seems to think that a real synchronicity would be one that is predicted. But, Mike, that’s precognition, another matter.

Here’s the difference. If I were thinking about people who are skeptical about psychic matters and Gabe Carlson sends me the above article, that’s synchronicity. But if I were to say ‘I have the feeling that I’m going to hear about someone’s skeptical point of view on synchronicity,’ then the article arrives, that’s a premonition or precognitive event. It could also be seen as a synchro, of course, but what Shermer is doing is upping the ante.

However, before anyone presents Mr. Shermer with an example of precogniton, keep in mind that he does not believe that psychic abilities exist, so he would not be impressed. I predict that he would have another contorted explanation for it.

Bottom line: Shermer was pretty baffled by the incident, so much so that he forgot the name of his literary agent. In fact, he was the one who played Monday-morning quarterback and tried his best to re-fit a neat synchro into an ordinary event.

Posted in synchronicity | 20 Comments

What Animals Teach Us

Posted on December 11, 2012 by Trish and Rob

joy

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Now that Obama has won the election, now that the Repugs are licking their wounds and are showing themselves to be very poor losers, we’ve got a new brand of politics at the dog park.

At the park now,  the losers sit at the far end, grumbling about why their party lost and talking incessantly about 2016. Seriously? We’re already discussing the presidential campaign of  2016? Meanwhile, the rest of us sit around in the shade, gabbing, tossing Frisbees and balls for our dogs, and notice that the snowbirds who arrive at the park now believe they own it. This means they believe a service sweeps in every afternoon and scoops up the dog poop (nope)   and that they have carte blanche – i.e., your dogs do whatever he/she wants to do in this wide open space.

Well, not quite. Today a young man arrives with two dogs, both of them intact males. The human is a horse person, seasonal, and has his dogs are on lead ropes, like what horses in training are accustomed to. But dogs are not horses, and as soon as he enters the park, Cody is all over his dog.

Cody – cooling off this past summer

Cody is a husky – affectionate toward the humans he knows, protective of puppies, endlessly playful. He doesn’t have an aggressive bone in his body. So Cody is ready to play with these two dogs as they come through the gate. The owner freaks out. He starts kicking Cody, then slaps him in the face and over the head with the lead ropes, shouting at him. A group of us are sitting in the shade as this is happening and are suddenly on our feet, moving collectively toward the gate.

Cody’s human, Karin, the paragon of non-confrontational, rushes past all of us, toward her dog  and this jerk who is slapping him and yells, “Hey, cut it out, he’s not hurting your dog!

And he isn’t. Cody is doing what all dogs do when fresh meat enters the dog park, sniffing, nipping, evaluating, playing the dominance game, I’m bigger and faster than you, chase me, c’mon, let’s play. Karin is a short woman, not exactly intimidating, and this horse guy towers over her. But she’s in his face, waving her arms, screaming at him and the man is somewhat taken back, you can see it in his body language.

“Your dog was going to attack mine!” he yells.

“Going to?” someone else shouts at him. “Pal, that’s like saying you shot the homeless guy who was going to rob you.”

He becomes really flustered, stabbing his finger toward Cody. “Get him outta this park, he’s dangerous.” He tugs on his dogs’ lead ropes, pulling them away from Karin, toward the middle part of the park, where some humans are still sitting, watching this spectacle.

“Her dog attacked mine,” he says, as if the humans in the shade are the jury. “You saw it, right?”

Colleen, whom we call the dog whisperer, just rolls her eyes.  “You bring  two intact males into the dog park, what do you expect?”

By then, I’ve back toward the sitting area to find Noah, but he’s standing under the tree, watching, wise enough to keep his distance from these disturbances. Cassie, who owns Willow, a border collie, just looks at me and whispers, “Spare me. Another Republican.”

Another woman who brings her three dogs daily to the park, turns to him and snaps, “You kicked Cody and hit him with the rope. That’s a fact. We all saw it.”

At this point, the horse guy gets really huffy. “Well, it’s obvious you’re all friends here. We’re leaving.”

And we’re all thinking the same thing: Don’t let the gate hit you in the butt on your way out, guy.

Most of these skirmishes at the dog park –  as in politics and in life-  happen because of the humans – not the dogs. Dogs seem to have an innate understanding about the rules of engagement where they can run free with other dogs, even dogs who are unfamiliar to them. When a new dog enters the park, the other dogs sniff, check things out, wag their tails – or don’t – and behavioral parameters are established quickly.

One of the honored traditions at the dog park involves an American bulldog, Diesel. He’s a gentle giant, an intact male owned by a Dutch woman who also brings her other two dogs. Here’re Diesel and Noah:

When the dogs in the park hear the woman’s truck pull into the parking lot, many of them they line up along the fence, waiting for Diesel.  He’s the star. Why? Because when his human lets him off the leash,  he tears along the outside of the fence, barking furiously, and within seconds, a pack of dogs inside the park are answering the call. For fifteen or twenty minutes, dozens of dogs race back and forth along the length of the fence, barking and howling and snapping at the wire mesh until they are all so exhausted they seek refuge and solace at the water bowls.

But if you take away the fence, the dogs just frolic and play.

The other day, a man with a young Ridgeback who runs daily with the Diesel pack, decided he didn’t like it and shouted at the Dutch woman to bring her dogs into the park. When she regarded him with puzzlement and pointed out that his dog runs daily with the pack that barks at Diesel,   he called the cops. And this is a guy who completely ignores his dog when they’re at the park. But suddenly, he doesn’t like what Diesel is doing so he calls the police?

Drama. A battle of human wills. We weren’t at the park when this happened, but Cassie told us about it over dinner one evening. “And oh, guess what?” she says at the end of her story. “He’s a Repub, too.”

I know what she means. But I also know some Republicans who treat their animal companions with the same love and attention they shower on their families and children. So maybe the political thing is too facile. But the lesson is valuable. As my dad frequently advised my sister and I, If you want to know what someone is really like, take note of how this individual treats animals, pets. It will tell you everything you need to know about whether you should invest time and energy in the relationship.

He was right. It has been one of my criterion ever since.

Posted in dogs, synchronicity | 14 Comments

More Exorcists on Call

Posted on December 10, 2012 by Trish and Rob

The Catholic diocese of Milan, Italy started an exorcism hotline in November 2012, and doubled the number of exorcism-practicing priests from six to 12. The diocese hopes to keep up with an apparent increase in calls over the past 15 years.

“From the number of calls we receive, the need has doubled,” Monsignor Angelo Mascheroni — the diocese’s chief exorcist since 1995 — told the news website Incrocinews. “We get young and old, men and women, people with different levels of education, from school-leavers to graduates.”

Mascheroni also said that one priest was reportedly seeing as many as 120 people a day.

A special switchboard has been set up where people can call Monday through Friday between 2:30 p.m. and 5 p.m. for all their exorcism needs. Mascheroni gave out the phone number to Incrocinews. Beginning with the country code, it is: 39-02-8556457 (If dialing from the U.S., you need to add 011 as the first three digits).

But Americans shouldn’t expect much help from the Milanese crew. The exorcists don’t want to travel too far from their home base and their website is in Italian, suggesting that foreign folks should take their demon problems elsewhere.

Interestingly, Mascheroni says that the demonic forces aren’t necessarily getting stronger. Rather, he says, cases of mental illness are increasing. He also suggests that the rise in exorcist calls could be related to the number of parents having discipline problems with their children.

Yeah. That’s especially true when the kids spin their heads around, spew green pea soup, and turn the room into a refrigerator.

 

 

 


Posted in synchronicity | 19 Comments

Joke, Hoax, or Something Else?

Posted on December 9, 2012 by Trish and Rob

I came across this bit of video on Whitley Strieber’s site, then clicked around, looking for other sources for the story.

According to an AP site, Russia’s Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev was giving a TV interview on Friday and “joked that each Russian leader gets two folders with information about extraterrestrials that visited our planet – and stayed here,” reports the AP.

His off camera comments to a journalist from REN TV, which according to Wikipedia is one of the largest private federal TV channels in Russia, is the  brief snippet you’ll hear. So is this a hoax, a joke, or a hint about impending disclosure?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=VZSNSAiCBw4

 

 

 

 

Posted in synchronicity, UFOs | 11 Comments

Synchronicity and iPhone5

Posted on December 8, 2012 by Trish and Rob

 

I had a Blackberry for about five years, through T-Mobile. In the beginning, I loved it. It was a real workhouse, able to accommodate just about anything I asked of it. Except. Whenever I tried to download an app, the download didn’t work. And the apps were nowhere near as extensive or interesting as the apps that Apple offers.

Last year, I got disgusted with T-Mobile. I had called to remove Megan from the account because she’d gotten an iPhone through AT&T. No problem, the tech said, it’s cancelled. But oh, by the way, he said, since your plan has now changed, since it’s just you on the account, we’re extending your contract by two years and charging you the $200 cancellation fee. I told the young man that T-Mobile was making a big mistake by doing this to a customer who had been with them for fifteen years. “You can count on this,” I said. “As soon as I can afford it, I will be breaking my contract with you.”

He sort of laughed.

Fast forward to October 7, 2012. I headed out that morning to the Apple store to do my research on iPhones. I spent a couple of hours in the store, playing with the iPhone 4S and the iPhone 5, and decided I was going to switch. But when I finally talked to a tech, he informed me the store was sold out of both phones. “See that line over there?” He pointed across the room. “All those people are waiting to pick up iPhones that they ordered online last night.”

OK. I went home and started calling every AT&T store within ten miles. The story was always the same. We’re sold out. We don’t know when we’re getting another shipment.   Then I found an AT&T store tucked away in a shopping area less than a mile from our house. I called, yes, they were open, and they had iPhones in stock. So at 3:30 that afternoon, I headed over there  and before I’d gone even half a block, my car sounded like the engine was coughing up marbles. Steam billowed from under the hood.

The car had stalled out during Tropical Storm Isaac, which dumped 14 inches of rain on us in about 24 hours. Our neighborhood looked like this (that island out there is our mailbox):

At any rate, the engine was shot and we got the car towed to our local garage.  Once I learned that insurance would pay for a new engine, I finally got to that little AT&T store just as they were closing.  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” the young man said. “Can you come back tomorrow?”

“Just a quick question,” I said, and asked about iPhones 4S, which were then selling for less than a $100. I explained that my daughter already had an iPhone with AT&T and asked what kind of plan they offered for two lines. The upshot was that they were sold out of the iPhone4S but had one iPhone5 left and was I interested?

One iPhone5?  Really? When the Apple store and every other AT&T store in the area were sold out? Synchro? Law of attraction? Interested? “Absolutely.”

“Come on in,” he said, and for the next hour he and another clerk got me set up.

Politically, I’m no fan of AT&T. They donate zillions to the Republicans. But the competition around here is pathetic. And because we already have our Internet landlines,  one cellphone, and TV service with them, the addition of my iPhone5 will save us more than $100 a month.  In addition, these two clerks went the extra mile, showing me the ins and outs, advising me to do this and that to save even more $.  I was impressed. I realized that any company, any corporation, is only as good as its employees and these two guys were stellar.

And hey, I loved the synchro. They’re closed, they have only one iPhone5 left – and were apparently the only store in our corner of Palm Beach County that did – I’d been pursuing this all day. At six PM I walked out with my new iPhone5.

I confess that I love gadgets, I enjoy figuring out how things work, and the iPhone5 may be the coolest thing yet. It’s lightning fast, lightweight and sleek, the apps download, email is flawless. The camera is as good as Rob’s high-end Canon, and I can actually get a signal in the house, which means, eventually, good-bye landline, another savings. I found the onscreen keyboard a bit tight, but then I discovered Siri, the strange female helper who translates your voice commands into text messages and emails and finds you a good restaurant or a gas station regardless of where you are.

Books I have downloaded onto my iPad can be pushed onto any other Apple device, including my new phone. When I got stumped on some facet of the phone, a young woman at the dog park talked me through it. And that’s the thing. If you get stuck on how to do something with this phone, ask anyone under 30 how to solve it. One woman’s husband called her in a panic from an airport about something he couldn’t figure out on his new iPhone5. Karin’s reply? “Warren, find someone under thirty and ask them.” He did and the problem was solved.

One of my issues with Macs is that there’s no good astrology software for the operating system. The only half decent software is clunky and doesn’t do a fraction of what my old Winstar program can do. So the other night I was searching for an astrology app  and found Astro Gold, which I downloaded for $30. This little app does nearly everything my expensive windows astrology program ($300) does. And now I’ve got it on my iPhone and my iPad.

Our daughter, 23,  is still bugging me to trade my 5 for her 4.   Ha. In your dreams.

My phone’s name? Synchronicity.

 

Posted in synchronicity | 13 Comments

Amusing Spams

Posted on December 7, 2012 by Trish and Rob

Spam. It used to be something gross in  a can. I ate my share in college because it was cheap. Now, of course, spam is what comes through your email and in comments on blogs. Ours dwindled for awhile after we found a plugin for  the check box that says, I am human.  But now spammers simply check the box and paste in their message.

Over the nearly four years we’ve had this blog, the tone of the spam messages have changed from hostile to complimentary to quizzical. I’ve collected some of the most amusing.

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This spammer at least has a sense of humor: Hello, i read your blog from time to time and i own a similar one and i was just curious if you get a lot of spam remarks? If so how do you prevent it, any plugin or anything you can recommend? I get so much lately it’s driving me insane so any support is very much appreciated.

This spammer apparently doesn’t realize that Howdy went out with John Wayne and those old westerns from the 1950s. Then again, wordpress must not know that, either. It’s the default for the greeting when you log in: Howdy! This post could not be written any better! Reading through this post reminds me of my old room mate! He always kept talking about this. I will forward this article to him. Pretty sure he will have a good read. Many thanks for sharing!

This guy needs some grammar lessons and you have to wonder about his “mission:” I am not sure where you’re getting your info, but good topic. I needs to spend some time learning much more or understanding more. Thanks for magnificent info I was looking for this info for my mission.

It sounds like this spammer was using a translation widget and that he/she may have some issues with a daughter:  You сan get definіtelу a great deal of particulars in thіѕ way tо thіnk about. That cοuld be a great lеνеl to bring uρ. I suρρly the іԁeas abоvе as normаl insρirаtion hoωеvеr сlearly you’ll discover questions just as the one you bring up the place the key factor will likely be getting sincere good faith. I don’t determine if finest practices have emerged around issues of these ranking, however I am sure that your particular job is clearly identified as an excellent game. Both youngsters think the impression of only a moment’s pleasure, for the entire content of their lives.

Another prankster: Hello there! Do you know if they make any plugins to protect against hackers? I’m kinda paranoid about losing everything I’ve worked hard on. Any suggestions.

Ah! An ex-English teacher commenting about spelling issues: Obviously like your web-site however you have to take a look at the spelling on several of your posts. Several of them are rife with spelling issues and I in finding it very troublesome to tell the reality however I will definitely come again again.

This one came from a psychic website and was on a political post. Go figure: WOW just what I was looking for. Came here by searching for tarot readings

This person was advertising  a treatment for panic attacks. I think he/she needs treatment for something. Hi! Quick question that’s entirely off topic. Do you know how to make your site mobile friendly? My blog looks weird when browsing from my apple iphone. I’m trying to find a theme or plugin that might be able to resolve this problem. If you have any recommendations, please share. With thanks!

OK, so who ARE these people?  Rob thinks they get paid a fee for each spam they post. But if the spam is never posted, how can they prove they posted it so they can get paid?  Could they be bots programmed to check the I am human box and paste in a message? Is there a programmer sitting in a dark room somewhere who hits a single button for, oh, say Ugg Boots, and the spam goes out to thousands of websites?

Sometimes, the tone of the spams are so similar I’m prompted to wonder if there’s a spam school these people attend, where spam teachers issue daily or weekly memos to guide their students.  Be kind, be critical, be complimentary, let ‘em rip.  I think there could be a novel somewhere in here.

 

Posted in synchronicity | 17 Comments

Apples to Apples and Alien Abductions

Posted on December 6, 2012 by Trish and Rob

This is an odd synchro. On Thanksgiving day, our friend Rob Lockhart usually joins us for the festivities. We eat  and drink and are merry, as the saying goes, and usually play Scrabble or Monopoly or some other board game in the aftermath of dinner. On this Thanksgiving Rob and Rob went for a long bike ride while Megan and I took the dogs to the park. When we got back, Megan went door to see our neighbors and I sat outside and read Grey Aliens and the Harvesting of Souls, by Nigel Kerner, a rather compelling look at UFOs, abductions, the entire weird field.

So after dinner we played this game called Apples to Apples. It’s Rob, Megan, me, Rob Lockhart (Tacayo) and Maddie, the 9-year-old girl who lives next door. The game is simple: each player chooses 7 cards from the red pile. There’s also a green pile and when it’s your turn you select a card from the green pack and the other players must select  one of their 7 cards that closely fits the word on the green cared.

Let’s say you chose a green card entitled  soft. Each of the other players must play a card they hold that aptly describes soft. Worm, brain, orange, grapefruit. The person who has chosen the green card must decide  which card  best describes  the word or phrase on the green card. The first person who wins eight rounds wins the game.

And I, who had two hours earlier been reading about abductees in Kerner’s book, which is so far a rather disturbing take on the alien agenda, pick a new card. Alien abduction. I burst out laughing. “Synchro,” I murmur, and snapped a photo of the card.

Not an earth-shattering synchro, just another tad of weirdness, and maybe a bit of the trickster tossed in.

 

Posted in aliens, synchronicity, trickster | 24 Comments

Synchronicity and Parallel Lives

Posted on December 5, 2012 by Trish and Rob

This story comes from our blogging friend, Terri Patrick. It illustrates how an initial synchronicity can continue to evolve over time.

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In February 2009 I was new to blogging and used the word “synchronicity” in a post. I got a comment from Rob MacGregor that he didn’t see the synchronicity and he wondered why I used that word. He and his wife had recently started a blog on synchronicity because they were writing a book on the topic. Our online relationship has continued and since I was blogging to develop my Author Persona it was influenced by that first contact with Rob & Trish.

Morgan and I were barely acquainted in 2009 when we both attended a workshop on marketing for authors. We both had such a visceral reaction to the presentation we could read the other’s anger from across the room. So we hooked up and decided we’d put together a marketing presentation that was valid. We started meeting monthly and soon presented a short overview of marketing basics to our writing chapter. Attendees (many published authors) were stunned that this was such new information and requested a more in-depth workshop.

As we continued to develop our Author Marketing 101 message we learned the need was great and we should bring a business focus to our workshop so it could be more easily promoted to lots of other chapters and authors. Morgan and I also came to learn we shared a lot of things!

We are both from Cleveland, Ohio and now live in Portland, Oregon because of our professional focus – in the electronics industry. Our approach to business is rooted in the core value of helping others and giving freely. We share an “open hand” approach to life, but we aren’t afraid to close our hand if we feel abused or misused. Both of us were raised in households filled with faith, but also are willing to question and be open to energies and God’s infinite possibilities. Introspective and energy work are critical components of who we are and how we choose to travel through this plane of existence. Our stars complement each other, almost perfectly – kinda scary.

So in March of 2012, Morgan and I have been amazed at how our AM101-Author Persona message is expanding in only a year and has become so fun for us, and beneficial to our author friends. We were at an intimate writer conference in WA and chatting in a parking lot with a literary agent from NJ. She ruffled through the draft of our workbook and stated, “This looks very professional. You two need to build your platform.”

This is so obvious that Morgan and I are stunned. It’s a combination “Aha!”  “Of Course!” AND “How the (expletive) do we do that?” A platform is a Marketing 101 concept required for any professional service business. Our message is that a platform does not apply to Novelists –  they need an Author Persona. But a Platform does apply to us regarding our AM101 message about the Author Persona being the dynamic core of a novelist’s marketing plan.

Morgan and I had created a free blogspot site where we put our 7 primary AM101 points into static pages to reside forever available in cyber space. But we weren’t doing anything with that blog, it was just an electronic handout for our workshop.

But as I was initiating my Author Persona back in 2009, my connection with the MacGregors was because they were blogging to build their platform and write their book. Hence, in May of this year, Morgan and I started blogging 3x a week and that’s when synchronicities seemed to happen every week as we would be inspired for a new post, or recruit a Guest Post. Our workbook will now have better examples and be a greater benefit to authors. We’ll be working on it again after the new year.

Because Morgan and I pay attention to synchronicities beyond the potential for a good parking space, we appreciate being able to see layers of synchronicities that build on each other. And that – to me – is a HUGE deal because though synchronicity is flavored with magic and mystery, it’s also the foundation for what is practical and good business.

And now, our Author Marketing 101 message is just what Trish and Rob need now they are Indie publishing their extensive back list of novels. And I’m thrilled they came to me for advice on their marketing.

 

Posted in synchronicity | 10 Comments

Harrington?

Posted on December 4, 2012 by Trish and Rob

Back in the late 1970s, long before I had met Rob, I was writing my first novel and named one of the main characters McGregor. This is not the same spelling – or origin – of my married name now – MacGregor – but it was close enough for  me to recognize some sort of quantum weirdness when I actually did meet Rob in 1981. I didn’t realize it at the time, but when I became Trish MacGregor, I was experiencing the tail end of a cluster synchro.

Cluster synchronicities can occur with anything – names, music, words, numbers. The point is usually the cluster itself, the context in which it occurs, and even if you don’t have any clue what it relates to, you sense it may be significant in the overall scheme of things.

So the other night I was casting around for last names for a character and came up with Harrington. That night, I dreamed about the name – but don’t remember the details, just the name.  The next morning, I dropped by Mike Perry’s  blog and read about a synchro involving the name Harrington.

I mentioned to Rob that I had a cluster synchro going on with the name Harrington. We don’t know anyone with that last name. Then again, when I wrote my first novel back in the 70s, I didn’t know anyone named McGregor or MacGregor.

I Googled the origin of the name Harrington and discovered that a number of them had come to the U.S. as far back as the 1600s.   Like McGregor, the name is Irish, and has a variety of meanings.  But in Irish it means surname. There are banks and cities named Harrington. There’s a Republican woman named Harrington running against Democrat Debbie Wasserman Schultz. There’s a college of design by that name.

I don’t have a clue what it means. Is someone named Harrington going to prove to be important in my life? Is this a trickster thing?  C’mon, what’s it mean?

I’m not a patient person, but I do enjoy digging and researching for answers.  There’s something going on here. I just don’t know what it is. Yet. You can bet that if I meet a Harrington in the next few days or weeks or months, I will pay very close attention.

I used this photo of our dog, Noah, on a bridge that juts out into a wild place, as  a kind of metaphor for this cluster. Important difference, though. He’s hoping to sniff out a squirrel;  I’m hoping he tracks down Harrington.

Posted in clusters, synchronicity | 29 Comments

The World’s Oldest Flash Mob

Posted on December 3, 2012 by Trish and Rob

This one is great. These dancers range in age from 65 to 96.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=AeyO5m0sM3E&NR=1

 

Posted in synchronicity | 6 Comments