I mentioned the fact that I can never recall watching a basketball game in which my team has won. (The one exception is a high school game in my home town when I was in gradeschool.) Nevertheless, I turned on the NCAA championship game to watch my graduate school alma mater play Memphis. I was also in the middle of a writing project that I had to finish. I felt like Zeus in the Iliad with his golden scales, watching the back-and-forth progress of the battle. When I was looking at my computer screen, Kansas would pull ahead. When I looked at the television screen, they gave up the lead. Then I would go back to my computer and they would pull ahead.
At half time, Kansas had a slight lead. I had finished my article. It was 10:30 p.m. (This Eastern Time Zone is murder on watching sports!) The half-time punditry went on and on. I decided to do what was best for my team and went to bed.
This morning I learned that the Kansas Jayhawks won in overtime! I’m sure it was thrilling, but I’m also sure that, through some mechanism that I do not fully understand–possibly involving bosons or that quantum physics principle that observing a system alters it–if I had been watching, that final winning shot would not have gone in.
So I feel that I played a part in this victory.
