Tiger win signals move toward normalcy

Theoretical cosmologists at the Probability Research Center expressed relief last week as Tiger Woods regained his #1 ranking in the golf world last week, after a six-month lapse.

"It's a positive step," said Dr. Richard Pike, project leader at the top-secret facility that's plunged the Earth through a series of dimensional probability zones over the past five years. "Finally, we may be on the road back to Probability Prime."

Dr. Patricia Hong, the project's chief quantum physicist, agreed. "In the field of probability, sports news is like a canary in a coal mine. Before last week, what we've seen had not been encouraging. Three Patriots Superbowl wins in four years, the first Red Sox World Series win in 86 years, an entire hockey season wiped out, and Tiger Woods not being the best golfer in the world. It doesn't take a quantum physicist to see that something strange is going on." Hong shook her head in consternation. "I mean really, the New England Patriots?!!"

"We can't take credit for Tiger's game," added technical specialist Lion Woods (no relation despite the improbably similar name). "It's likely that our equipment moved us back into a dimensional probability zone where Tiger's natural skills could allow him to prevail. Probably. Although we will never know for sure."

"Our world is like a driverless bus careening down a road," explained Dr. Pike. "It's a narrow road that branches sixteen times each microsecond, and we don't have an accurate map. All we can do is lean to the left or right and pray that we're heading in the correct direction.

"We've given up on trying to impact world events. When we pushed the world into a probability zone where Iraq didn't have weapons of mass destruction, we weren't prepared for the...unintended consequences of our actions."

"Ashlee Simpson," Dr. Hong explained, with a shiver.

"Now we're just trying to put the world back into the zone where we found it," said Dr. Pike. "Getting Tiger back on top of the golf world was an important first step, but we can't rest until Garry Kasparov returns to professional chess and Michael Jackson is once again the undisputed king of pop music."

According to Dr. Pike, the world has been out of its original probability zone since the Fall of 2000, when the research center conducted its first experiments. "We were trying to make a flipped coin land on its edge, and what we got was the 2000 Presidential election. We're very, very, very sorry."