The question is: Name two businesses that you wish would be wiped off the face of the earth.

It gets harder and harder to watch anything on TV or listen to anything on the radio that have sponsors without turning off the sound whenever their ads air. Between all of the pharmaceuticals with unmemorable names (I do remember the name Prevagen, which shows that I don’t need it, and I do want to take Skyrizi, because I like to say the name) and now these gambling sites (which come with the welcome “If you have a gambling problem,….”), I turn off a lot of sound.

But then I thought: Maybe I should place a bet with Fan Duel or Draft Kings, as long as I am comfortable with knowing that I can’t lose the bet. But, I changed my mind, so I will bet any of you readers: I bet that George Santos is going to resign. Any takers?

And why, on such a sure bet, did I change my mind?

I thought about this as I was listening today to Georgia Tech (of all places) professor Jeremy England (a Haberman Institute program) talk about the imperfections of science in predicting the future, no matter how much you tried to predict the future, because (1) you never know fully how one thing connects to the other (he called in the butterfly theory – if a butterfly flaps his wings, does that affect the likelihood of a hurricane on the other side of the world), and – since this was a talk on science and Judaism – (2) some things may only be understood through divine intervention. (This is probably an awful condensation of a very interesting talk)

If Jeremy England is right (or at least if my version of Jeremy England is right), then I could bet that George Santos will resign, but find out that he won’t – either because a butterfly flapped its wings in, say, Dubai, or because God intervened and kept him in office. The first of these possibilities is something I just can’t know, and the second something that I would imagine I couldn’t influence.

So, tonight I am watching the news. The Biden story on classified documents requires a detailed analysis, and is dependent on facts we don’t yet know. It’s different from the Trump story on classified documents in major ways, because Trump denied he had any classified documents, and then said that he declassified the classify documents that he didn’t have, necessitating an FBI search. Other than that, whether the cases are similar, we don’t really know.

And then there is this guy Matt Schlapp. I was always suspicious of him, so if he did what Mr. Republican Anonymous said he did, I am not surprised and, as usual, expect other Mr. Republican Anonymouses will come out of the woodwork, as all other sorts of mouses do.

And then there’s this guy who it looks like murdered his wife. I have never had any thoughts about murdering my, or anyone else’s, wife, but now I know what I shouldn’t do. I shouldn’t ask Prof. Google how to dispose of, or how to hack up, a body. That would be a big mistake, as this guy is finding out.

That’s it for now. Oh, and for the record – I also cut the sound on ads from the Shriner’s Hospital and St. Jude (not because they don’t do good work, but because their adds are tearjerkingly bad), as well as Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and more. There were, for sure, many things bad about the USSR – but one thing strikes me today. When you watched TV or listen to the radio……you never had to put up with ads.