colin dellow's bln

At Payless Shoesource:

"Phone number, please," says the clerk at Payless Shoes to my housemate, Sarah.

"Umm, why do you need my phone number?"

"It's so we can track how well shoes sell at given stores."

Me now, "That makes no sense. Can you just type in 10 random digits?"

"Err, yeah, I could. But, really, given chaos theory, is anything really random?"

Well, actually, yes. "Well, actually, yes. The interarrival time of radioactive decay events are random." And from what little I know, I think chaos theory just says that some things that appear random, aren't random.

"Oh, but it just looks that way because the sample size is small. Taken over infinity, patterns would start to occur."

Twitch, twitch.

This reminds me of the time I phoned NET10 tech support.

"Can we have your email address, sir?"

"Why?"

"It's so we can email you advertisements about the product."

"I don't want to give you my email address, then."

"You don't have an email address?"

"No, I just don't want to give it to you so you can spam me."

"You don't have an email address?"

"That's correct."

"And your birthdate, sir?"

"June 14, 1911."

"Thank you."