Hello Cathyrn:

My statement about the quality of your science was facetious hyperbole; nothing more. It implied that you wouldn't have had a second thought about the significance of your premonition if you had completed high school science. I wouldn't have made the joke if I had known you would take it seriously. I apologize.

Your description of your experience at UCLA created such a large impact on your psyche that it would be foolish for me to try to convince you that it probably doesn't hold any more significance than a person who dreamed of winning the lottery and did. Despite the apparent confirmation of your premonition, most likely it was sheer coincidence. Before you accept such evidence as proof of the metaphysical, try to evaluate your experience with a skeptical mind. It is imperative that you consider the possibility that your mind may have defrauded you in the same manner that some people are convinced that they have been abducted by aliens. What is frightening is that there are growing numbers of people who actually believe in such nonsense.

It is incorrect to say that science can't explain your psychic premonition. Science can't explain how or why humans get strong feelings of premonition, but it can explain the coincidences that reinforce the false notion that the feelings were caused by future events. In any situation such as yours, the first question that should be asked is, what is the most logical explanation for the experience? It seems to me the most logical answer is that you are a highly imaginative person, something was bothering you for some unknown reason (perhaps news stories of earthquakes or other major disasters), you sensed something out of the ordinary in your immediate environment which was totally unrelated to the earthquake but that most likely had it's origins in your memory of past experiences, and accidentally hit upon an event that was about to happen. I know, I know, that is all speculative, but my assumptions are infinitely more reasonable than your assumption that there was a psychic occurrence that enabled you to foresee the future.

Many people presume they have had metaphysical experiences, but that does not prove that the metaphysical world exists. If enough people have enough dreams or premonitions about winning the lottery or envisioning such future events, there will be some remarkable occurrences of seemingly high improbability that will come true. You stated that you have had many premonitions of future events. That may be true, but I'll wager that you have had many more premonitions that did not come true. Most people frequently have those kinds of feelings. Most of the time they are false premonitions. It is characteristic for those who believe strongly in their premonitions to forget all those that did not occur.

A while ago I debated a woman who claimed to have absolute certainty about the sex of all four of her children before they were born. The odds are 1:16 against a mother correctly predicting the sex of all four of her children, and if 16 mothers get the feeling that they "know" the sex of their unborn children, on average 15 mothers will be wrong; however, one out of 16 will be correct by chance, and you would never be able to tell that woman that she did not have a psychic connection with the unknown. In fact I was losing the debate with the woman in question until she haughtily declared that she not only knew the sex of her children before they were born, she knew it before they were even conceived, and she also knew their hair and eye color.

The human mind is a great deceiver at times, and it is very important not to get more out of an experience than is rightfully there. Mark Twain said it best: A cat that sat on a hot stove will never sit on a hot stove again, but it will also never sit on a cold stove either.

I am getting a strong premonition that my message will not even come close to knocking your socks off, but I don't care about that as long as you realize that I am still very fond of you even if you did only get a C in physics.

I promise not to pee on the carpet.

Don