The Incredible Power of Chance Events

Adams and Jefferson

docuguy — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 01:11:52 +0000

Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were both deeply involved in writing the Declaration of Independence. They both died on the same day in 1826. That day was the 4th of July, the date of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. And it was the 50th anniversary to the day of the signing of the document.

It was destiny

docuguy — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 07:11:46 +0000

DeviantART wrote:

Im sick of people using phrases like ‘it was fate’ or ‘destiny’. Those beliefs imply that we are not responsible for our own actions because the universe already has a chosen path for us to take. Its the lazy way of deriving at a reason for why something happened. I believe we make our own choices, and although somethings are out of our control, no supernatural force is making it happen.

–
The greatest lovers were murderers first.

One night standards

docuguy — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 03:37:24 +0000

This article originally appeared in “Time Out Chicago.”

So it happened again. You’re not sure where your keys are, your head is still pounding, and the girl you hooked up with is gone. The night is kind of a blur and there are eight random text messages from your friends wondering what happened to you. Man, I sure hope she didn’t steal anything…. Sounds as if, when it comes to one-night stands, someone is a rookie.

The one-night stand gets a bad rap. But many lasting relationships have begun with a chance encounter—or at least, that’s the premise of countless romantic movies. You may not be interested in that, but you could be and that is the important part. Also, technically speaking, it is not considered a one-night stand if you have sex again in the morning. And hell, if Ron Jeremy can make a living at his specialty, then why can’t you take someone home from a random bar on any given night? It really depends on whom you meet and how you handle it. Wilt Chamberlain said he slept with 20,000 women—there’s gotta be someone for you out there tonight.

via One night standards – Time Out Chicago.

‘Cold Soul’ Karma

docuguy — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 05:55:03 +0000

Imagine having a dream, writing a screenplay based on your night’s slumber, then turning that story into an award-winning screenplay that takes you to the Sundance Labs. After a chance meeting with an actor at a festival party, the established, name talent expresses interest in this story. The film is made, seen at Sundance and sold. The scenario may seem like a one in a million chance at best or simply an unlikely daydream at worst.

“I guess that’s called beginner’s luck,” “Cold Souls” writer/director Sophie Barthes told indieWIRE in New York earlier this week. Her film, starring actor Paul Giamatti, played out in this unlikely way, and is being released theatrically by Samuel Goldwyn today (Friday, August 7). Not bad for a young French-born New Yorker who has only directed two shorts.

Three years ago, Barthes read C.G. Jung’s “Modern Man in Search of a Soul,” which she says fueled a vivid dream that forms the basis for “Cold Souls.” “I try to be disciplined and write down all my dreams,” she said. “With this, I thought maybe it could be a play or another short film, but I noticed it had all the elements necessary for a narrative film. I shared the story with people and they were laughing and reacting well. The story at first seemed absurd, but people were laughing.”

Fortunately for her film, she found herself alongside Giamatti at the ‘06 Nantucket Film Festival where she won the screenplay competition.

“I felt like a stalker,” said Barthes laughing. “I had seen him at Sundance…but then I saw him [at Nantucket]. I felt like maybe it was a sign.” She continued, “I quickly drank a glass of champagne and just did it – and he reacted well. I told him the dream and we connected. It worked, “I thought [afterward], ‘OK, we were all just a bit drunk and this won’t go anywhere’ – but two days later, I heard back.”

via From Dream to Screen: ‘Cold Soul’ Director Sophie Barthes Must Have Great Karma! – indieWIRE.

Did Fate Play a Role?

docuguy — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 22:31:45 +0000

Paola Casali, a 42-year-old tourist from Rome, wanted to take a helicopter ride over New York City with her son Lorenzo. But when they arrived at the 30th Street Heliport, about midday on August 8th, 2009, there were no other passengers there. In minutes they heard the tragic news. The flight that took off just before they arrived had crashed, killing all aboard.

Ms Casali was quoted by the New York Times as saying she felt that it was fate or some kind of divine intervention that had prevented them from making the ill-fated flight.

“I feel so confused, but I feel that we are so lucky,” she said a few hours after the crash. Today begins a new life for me.”

She continued, “What is so strange is that this morning Lorenzo felt so nervous and did not want to fly today. He wanted to stay behind in a Starbucks but I said, ‘No, no, no, this is completely safe,’ ” she said, adding that she had taken a similar helicopter tour in New York about six years ago.

Could a large mechanism of fate have played a role in her son’s reluctance to fly that day? Or was it only a small, personal decision that saved their lives?

Read the whole story here: Two Who Arrived Minutes After Fatal Hudson Flight, and Avoided Death – NYTimes.com. Additional reporting by the Times here.

The Pope’s Alarm Clock

docuguy — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 16:56:30 +0000

Pope Paul VI had a little alarm clock. He bought it in 1923, and for 55 years it was set to ring at six in the morning. But on Sunday, August 6, 1978 the little alarm clock went off at 9:40 pm. It wasn’t a random moment. It was the moment of the Pope’s death. and, for no known reason, the clock started ringing as the Pope lay dying. Later, Father Romeo Panciroli, a Vatican spokesman, commented, ‘It was most strange. The Pope was very fond of the clock. He bought it in Poland and always took it with him on his trips.’ The story is quoted in The Unexplained : Coincidences and Connections and there is also a reference to the story in Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II, by George Weigel.

Just a note: For more stories of chance events and coincidences visit our other blog at http://www.chancehappens.com.

Quirkology

docuguy — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 20:48:03 +0000

In Richard Wiseman’s book Quirkology he reports about a chance event that seems to be more than a coincidence. In 1953 a television reporter named Irv Kupcinet was staying at London’s Savoy Hotel. He opened a drawer and found some items that belonged to a friend of his, Harry Hannon, managed of the Harlem Globetrotters. Then, two days later, Kupcinet got a letter from Hannin, who had been staying at the Hotel Meurice in Paris and had found one of Kupcinet’s ties in a drawer in his room. Sounds like Quirkology to me. Read the story in Quirkology: How We Discover the Big Truths in Small Things. The book delves into the probabilities of quirky things happening and whether something else aside from chance is afoot.

The Perfect Picture of Chance

docuguy — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 18:47:32 +0000

Julius Shulman was a brilliant photographer of memorable architecture, but he got his start in that direction because of a random meeting. As a kid growing up in Los Angeles, he took just one class in photography in high school and drifted from subject to subject as he audited classes at UCLA and UC Berkeley. He carried around an Eastman box camera and earned a little rent money taking pictures with it. One of his photographs, of the 6th Street Bridge in LA, even won a contest. Then, by chance, he met the great architect Richard Neutra. Shulman died recently, and his obit in the Los Angeles Times carried this account of the random meeting that would change his life.

It was a chance meeting with Neutra in March 1936 — two weeks after Shulman left Berkeley — that would open up the possibility of becoming an architectural photographer. A man who was renting a room from Shulman’s sister, and who was working as a draftsman for Neutra, invited Shulman along one day to see Neutra’s Kun house, which was under construction near Fairfax Avenue and Hollywood Boulevard. As was his habit by then, Shulman took along a vest-pocket camera that was equipped with a bellows that unfolded.

“I had never seen a modern house before,” Shulman said. It “intrigued me with its strange forms — beyond any previous identity of a house in my experience.”

Shulman developed a few of the pictures and sent them to the draftsman, who showed them to Neutra. The architect, then in his mid-40s, sent for young Shulman and ordered up more prints.

With Neutra’s invitation to photograph other projects, Shulman was suddenly a professional architecture photographer.

Read the rest of the Los Angeles Times article by clicking here. An appreciation of Shulman was posted here by Brady Westwater, who writes the LA Cowboy blog.

Music Notes on Chance

docuguy — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 00:06:08 +0000

John Coltrane was a great musician and great seeker of new jazz horizons. He’s been described as “after Charlie Parker, the most revolutionary and widely imitated saxophonist in jazz.” He made a name and a sound for himself playing the tenor saxophone. But because of a transportation mixup one day late in 1958 a fellow musician left a soprano saxophone in Coltrane’s car. The soprano, a smaller horn with a more Middle Eastern sound than Coltrane’s customary tenor, was a nearly forgotten member of the saxophone family. Its biggest proponent was last active in the late 1920s and 1930s, the New Orleans player Sidney Bechet. Coltrane tried the soprano and liked it. early in 1959 he stopped at the Selmer saxophone factory in Elkhart, Indiana to buy a soprano. It would later become the sound he was seeking to take his music to a new level.

Was it an accident that Coltrane found the soprano horn in his car one day? Or was it possible that it was “meant” to happen? In this blog we’ll revisit this idea and see if we can find out.