the cherry coke miracle. or, the proof that david hume never went to popeye's. and quote 7.

Ive always remembered reading david hume senior year at u of m. he was the first philosopher i really felt was speaking to me.

it seemed to me he wasnt speculating about life. it seemed like he really understood things.

anyway, i primarily remember what he said about miracles. one of his basic gists was that if someone claims to have experienced a miracle, in order to judge whether or not the miracle actually took place, you must decide which is the bigger miracle - this person essentially lying, or the supposed miracle itself. you throw out the bigger one, and then you have your answer.

for instance, both of my parents have always claimed that many many years ago, while they were at a party, they saw a ufo. they have never backed down from this.

so which is the bigger miracle - that a ufo hovered above my 'rents, or that my rents are in some way misrepresenting what happened?

an actual ufo would be a huge miracle, while my parents being confused would be a relatively tiny one. so i throw the ufo out. im left with the idea that my parents mistook a satellite, or plastic bag or something, for a ufo.

well, this all got thrown on its head last night.

picture it. a popeye's restaurant on the lower east side, last night. im eating my dinner there, while reading new york mag. (i will not bother to explain what i was doing supping in popeye's, b/c it is inexcusable no matter how you slice it.)

anyway, i was sitting there with a chicken strips meal, a cup of cherry coke from the fountain without a top (that's key) (i prefer to drink fountain soda without straw and top - i like the sensation of the ice touching my lips), and the ny mag. i got engrossed in an article, then i reached for the cup and i couldnt feel it. so i looked up, and the cup was gone.

the only conclusion i could come to was that someone stole the cup. what else was there?

but then, i looked down, and i saw the cup sitting inverted on the floor with a small puddle of cherry coke surrounding it. (there were no ice cubes in the small puddle, but i didnt really take stock of that fact.) anyway, obviously i had accidentally knocked the cup off the table. no big shock there, right?

but here's where it gets nuts. i pick up the cup, and a torrent of ice cubes and cherry coke pours out, making the small puddle very large (the cup had been nearly full).

this was a miracle. accidentally, i had knocked the cup off the table in an absolute perfect fashion. think about it. there was no top on the cup at any pt. the cup had hit the ground and instantly rested upside down such that it essentially vacuum-sealed its contents inside. this would explain why i didn't hear the crash of the cup hitting the ground. there's no way the floor was flat enough that there was no leakage, but whatever leakage there was was minimal.


i dont think you could try to do this a thousand times and achieve it even once. i dont even see 10,000 times being enough. it was a flat-out miracle. if i weren't me, i would not believe me. i barely believe it myself, and i lived through it! thing is, i do believe it happened. i know it did.

when i picked up the cup, and realized what happened, i looked around to see if anyone else had witnessed it, but the lone dude behind the counter had not.

as for hume's test, i dont know what to tell you. i guess if i were anyone else, id conclude that bean misinterpreted the event somehow. my claim is surely the bigger miracle. but this happened!

on a totally unrelated note, quote 7:

After the horses came Muriel, the white goat, and Benjamin, the donkey. Benjamin was the oldest animal on the farm, and the worst tempered. He seldom talked, and when he did, it was usually to make some cynical remark--for instance, he would say that God had given him a tail to keep the flies off, but that he would sooner have had no tail and no flies.
-George Orwell, Animal Farm