(Submitted by friend of the blog, Skepticality host Derek Colanduno)

So, this past Saturday Swoopy, my wife Susan, and I all jumped in the car to head out to a local restaurant for some dinner. On the way, Swoopy asked if I saw her last Facebook post. It was about the fact that she happened to be watching VH-1 in the background while studying for a test, and one of the videos that came on was by Nitzer Ebb. We both found that funny since we never knew that Nitzer Ebb had a video, let alone one which would make it all the way to VH-1. Heck, Nitzer Ebb wasn’t even popular enough in their ‘hay day’ to end up on TV of any sort. We had to tell my wife who the band was, not surprising since they aren’t much of a household name.

When we got home from dinner I went to check on my desktop computer. I had left it to do a full scan of all of my files so it could find all the ones which I had not looked at, or opened in over a couple years (just doing some digital spring cleaning).

Well, the file at the top of the list, the one which hadn’t been opened or changed the longest? That happened to be the .mp3 file for “Isn’t It Funny How Your Body Works”, the song by Nitzer Ebb. I have about 1.4 terabytes of files, .mp3 files take up about 400GB or so of that space. I had to make Swoopy come over to my screen so she could see what popped up at the top of my scan. She said, “Well, I DID say that the band is one that doesn’t get played much.”

Maybe the cosmos is telling the world to bring back strange 80’s metal-techno…..


Below are the extended notes provided by cognitive psychologist and statistician Barbara Drescher for use in Skepticality Episode 231.  Take a look and leave your comments below. Also, please be sure to listen to the podcast for our own sarcastic and hilarious commentary. Also, visit Barbara’s blog.

What makes this not a big coincidence is something that Derek shared in the story: they were surprised to see Nitzer Ebb because the band was obscure enough to be forgotten. One likely reason he hadn’t played that mp3 recently is that the band was obscure enough to be forgotten. It’s a cute story, but the odds are in the “sane” category. 😉

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