Clam Lottery Experiments: Outcome unclear

I'm going to say: SO FAR, SO GOOD. But also, as they ritually intone at the end of every single article in every single human science magazine: MUCH MORE RESEARCH IS NEEDED.

The human attitude toward chance is STRANGE INDEED. Sometimes, you drop a gift like this in a Shaved Monkey's lap and ALL THE OTHERS go scrambling to find a similar prize for themselves. Other times they SIMPLY DON'T NOTICE. Or A LITTLE OF BOTH. Take this restaurant recruitment scene. The guy who bit into the pearl? Totally unaffected. The guy's wife? Intrigued, but unconverted. The ENTIRE GROUP AT THE NEXT TABLE? Instantly signed on for life to the Piscatorial Cause. I don't get it either. On a different day in a different diner, the results might have been just the opposite. Or only the wife would be recruited, or only the guy working in the back who orders boxes of frozen Clams. Or everyone within a 5-mile radius, or EVERYONE WITHIN REACH OF THE AP/UP BULLETIN CIRCULATED IN THE NATION'S NEWSPAPERS AND MAGAZINES.

I really think sometimes this is the basis of the landscum religions: they don't celebrate the status quo the way WE do. They're too busy trying to FIND the damned thing. But on that point, too, MUCH MORE RESEARCH IS NEEDED.

Questions like this make me EVEN HAPPIER that we aren't forced, like the intergalactic Little Green Men conspiracy, to resort to kidnapping and anal probes. AND WE GET TO EAT THE RECRUITS. We come "to serve man," indeed!