Saved by Always Save

As reported in the Columbia Tribune, Brent Decker, 44 of Columbia, Missouri was down on his luck, unable to find a job, and reached a point of desperation and prayed. He asked for a sign. He got one.

Two days later, in an attempt to add a small bit of pleasure to his life he slowly reached his salt covered fingers into his Always Save bag of chips for another small piece of greasy happiness. That next chip was his answer; it had a cross burned right into the middle of it.

"I believe God shows himself in different ways. It may seem insignificant or not, but he manifests himself in different ways," said Decker. "It was a big eye-opener for me."

Now I do not want to make fun of a man who is jobless and looking for hope. But what I do want to do is point out what Dirk Burhans, author of Crunch! A History of the Great American Potato Chip (no kidding) had to say about this. He points out that with the mass quantities of potato chips being produced every hour in this country, "You’re going to get some pretty interesting things," and then said that in a simple Ebay search found potato chips in all kinds of interesting shapes.

This is a case of the law of truly large numbers. The odds of an individual event may be very low, but if given enough opportunities, the chance of that individual event not happening becomes smaller. With billions of potato chips being produced, in combination with pareidolia (the tendency for humans to find recognition in random shapes) is it any wonder someone found this chip? How many times has he or other people who were not looking for a sign from God found a chip like this and just chowed it down? Now the most important question- will the chip help him find a job? Probably not, but I wish the best of luck to him.

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I ran 25 minutes today! Hooray for me, I finally did it. Now on to week 7 of the 9 week program.