making myself a guinea pig, albeit a potentially wealthy psychic guinea pig

I have been presented with a remarkable simultaneous scientific and financial opportunity. A mysterious envelope arrived in my mailbox, postmarked Tashkent, OH. Inside was a assiduously clipped full-page newspaper advertisement. The banner of which was:



Am I suited for this? I'm certainly skeptical. I have played the lottery (granted, only when the expected value of the ticket exceeds its cost--that is, when the jackpot has become so large from weeks of no winner that it's actually economically in one's interest to play).* I am always interested in advancing the cause of para-psycho-socio-economic research. I wouldn't mind winning up to $250,000.00 (and even much more). Sounds like I'm a good candidate.

The text of the newspaper advertisement included a detailed explanation of the new parapsychological breakthrough that would be tested in this experiment. The hypothesized method for making massive winnings a near certainty (not a matter of "luck", a matter of seizing the right "configuration of gain") involves the identification and specific of five factors unique to each prospective lottery player. This part of the ad succinctly explains the gist of it:



How much more convincing does one need? So I promptly filled out the form and sent it in.

I did fib on a few things to make it sound like I was more needy and motivated to participate than I actually am, as I don't want to be left out. I also made a couple of modifications to my birth time and birth place information, but only after doing some astronomical calculations in Stata and figuring out that it would not affect my five factor information for the purposes of this study. (And, after scanning the form to post here on the weblog, I whited out the address of the current parking place of the RV.)



I'll let the weblog know about the reply I receive. I'm also curious about what mailing lists sending this in will get me on. I should have inserted a middle initial or spelled my name differently (Jeremi?) so that I could track the mailing list consequences.

Wish me luck! Or, I mean, wish me configuration of gain! And wish me the knowledge of how to seize it!

* Not true! I have also twice bought a collective set of 10 lottery tickets for my family for drawings held over a weekend when we were all home.