Punxsutawny Phil

I clicked on a link “find out what Punxsutawny Phil saw.” This led me to a page with a video in it, front top and center, which started playing an advert, natch. I clickly, or quickly, closed the window because the answer to the question is either “saw his shadow,” or “didn’t see his shadow.” This does not require a video preceded by an advertisement.

I think we agree Phil is a boy groundhog, so, no need to refer to their shadow.

So I still don’t know. However, for reasons I will outline, I don’t care. Phil — we will call him simply, Phil, since not only is it difficult to spell the name of this Pennsylvania town, but even harder to type it without error — and his shenanigans have been recorded for 135 years now, or so, and in hindsight, it is easily ascertained that his accuracy for these predictions is only 39%.

If you’re a betting person, that means you can safely bet against him for even money, and you’ll come out ahead over time. Statistically, that is. Maybe 135 isn’t a big enough database. Because this also means that you can assign some slight predictive value to believing the opposite of what Phil says. And it’s real hard to believe the premise for this whole myth can make any sense no matter how you spin it.

My prediction, based on nothing at all, is that winter will be over soon, no matter what Phil says.

To sum up: Bill Murray came around eventually only by realizing that it’s OK to be sort of crazy because we’re human and that’s what we do best.

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