re: Sorry to hear about your brother. Finding his hat that way is eerie. I mean, what are the odds? The odds that the hat survived to be held out without being just thrown away as garbage. The odds that it was put out for sale the very day you came along. The odds that you were even in the vicinity of the sale taking place. And the most staggering of all, the fact that you were looking for hats and even recognized it for what it was.

Thanks Laz, ja the universe works in mysterious ways.

"Logically" as All But One illustrates, the odds of finding something that ought be an _extremely rare_ find increases when *something* may be causing us to go hyper-actively looking for these things (from our past) in UBS's, garage/lawn sales, and the like.

We may not even be entirely aware of it at the time, but we're looking for these things.

But then as you point out, something seems wrong with the math. Because as All But One also illustrates, you find stuff that you really statistically _oughtn't_ even if you are looking for it, because the odds seem so high against it.

"Seek and Ye Shall Find"

always sounded a bit like religious hokum to me, but it does seem to be one of the elemental truths of our existence that the Gods of the universe actively support.

Life is certainly odd sometimes, *gaze left* *gaze right* I find that life is sometimes not unlike TNG's "Encounter at Farpoint" episode, where when we need a thing, it finds a way to appear.

Doesn't sound terribly scientific, but I find that happens quite a bit.

I notice that pattern of finding-what-I'm-looking-for emerging to greater and greater degree in my life, or maybe it always happened but I'm just noticing it more now, in either case there does seem to be some sort of repulsor or dampening field in place, where it's

1. based on subconscious more than conscious focus.

2. is focussed more on need than want.

Attempts to focus on having the universe aid in finding a winning lottery ticket, for example appear to be thwarted.

Though even there I may have actually found one and fragged it up through my own stupidity.

Approx a year ago, when I noticed this odd trend of things appearing that I had on some level been looking for, it became such a prominent occurence that I thought I'd run an experiment and see what would happen if I _focussed_ on finding something. 

I chose a lottery ticket as my experiment's focus point.

I found a lottery ticket that day that was three months old, put it in my pocket, and then decided this line of thought was unscientific and daft, and talked myself out of it, and subsequently forgot all about it.

Approx a month later I found the ticket in my pocket, and on a whim brought it into a store to have it checked.

The store owner took my ticket, then a few moments later tossed it in the garbage can behind him, shaking his head in the "sorry, not a winner" manner.

As I left, I felt something was wrong, but I wasn't sure what, his largely his demeanor struck me as odd, and I was in a hurry, so I registered the odd sensation and left to go about my business.

Later as we found out (on the news) there was an statistically unlikely/un-natural occurence of Store owners and Lotto Terminal Operators winning lotteries.

Based on deconstructing my own experience, I think I know how they're doing it.

In short: They toss your ticket in the can behind them (instead of returning your ticket to you) and tell you you didn't win, when you did. 

Then they fish it out of the can and cash it themselves.

To make matters worse, everytime I go in that store, they act oddly, nervously, like they're guilty of something.

But of course, it's all circumstantial, I can't prove anything, and I don't know anything. And I don't actually assume that I won. My stupidy and the uncertainty combined with what was going on with the lotto ticket defrauding, just bothered me.

It's always been nagging at the back of me head, that I fell for that technique. The bottom line is that regardless of whether I had a winning ticket or not, the clerk should have returned my ticket to me.

That he didn't illustrates (to me) an attempt to acclimate his customers to a situation in which he *could* (if so inclined) defraud customers of their winning tickets.

In any case, as a result of all that, It also occurs to me that there MAY be a way to catch them doing this. 

IF they actually insert the ticket into the machine (and I don't think the smarter clerks do, they pretend they do and check your ticket for real after they retrieve it from their garbage)

but in any case, as GREED is a function of nature for the sort of person that would defraud lotteries, I will wager many of them don't just NOT insert the tickets, I would wager they've also worked out how to insert the ticket and tell you it isn't a winner.

ie. IF you watch to ensure they're inserting the ticket and the ticket is a winner, a winning-sound should go off.

In order for them to effectively keep the winning tickets that they have inserted into the lotto machine, it seems to me they would 'ave to have _disabled the speaker_ in the lotto machine. 

And that would be evidence.

That'd be my sugg on how to catch them anyway.

(that and don't let them keep your lottery ticket no matter what and give em hell when they try to -Ed)

The Avante Guardian. ---- Einstein's Hair^2 //Approved.