(FORTUNE Magazine) – Various improbable events have been much in the news lately, and Keeping Up's senior handicapper has been laboring overtime to figure out the odds and betting angles on such suddenly interesting longshots as the likelihood of dying in a plane crash, winning the New York State Lottery, being hit by lightning, or finding himself in agreement with the executive director of the ACLU (see item above). Not a favorite in the field. ) Airline safety: Despite the horrifying film footage you have possibly been looking at in recent months, it is still tough to make money by dying in a plane crash. In the period beginning in 1980 and ending several weeks ago, only 0.0002% of all scheduled commercial flights around the world had accidents involving one or more fatalities. That's 499,999 to 1 against a crash. Despite this year's soaring death totals, the record for all of 1985 could still come in at around half a million to 1: what's really different about this year is that the crashes have involved larger aircraft than usual. In addition to long odds, the investor seeking to beat this game has to contend with quite a bit of vigorish. Those characters you see at booths around the airport are generally offering you only 30,000 to 1 or so. The insurance ''takeout'' -- that is, the premium income not recycled to the heirs of crashers -- seems to be always well over 75%. ) The New York State Lottery: The takeout here is only 60%, meaning that it is facially a better bet than airline insurance. In the days before the state's recent $41-million jackpot drawing, when Lotto tickets were sometimes selling at a rate of 21,000 a minute, numerous wisenheimers disparaged this action by observing that you are more likely to be killed by a lightning bolt than to win at Lotto. However, the statement assumes that you buy only a couple of Lotto tickets a year. The object in the principal Lotto game is to pick the right combination of six numbers between one and 48, the odds against which are 12,271,511 to 1. If you have a medium Lotto habit and invest $5 a week in such combinations (which cost 50 cents apiece), then the odds against you over the course of a year are only 23,599 to 1. Getting terminated by lightning is infinitely harder. Data from the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics indicate a recent average of maybe 105 such sensational deaths per year, implying odds of around 2,100,000 to 1. ) ACLU Agreement: As coyly hinted in Keeping Up's first item, your correspondent disagrees with ACLU Executive Director Ira Glasser about numerous major matters. We had instructed Nexis, our favorite computerized information-retrieval system, to cough up all stories in which ''Glasser'' turned up within 30 words of ''right'' or ''rights.'' Of the 101 news stories vouchsafed in response, one left us entirely calm. It appeared in the New York Times of June 6, 1985, under the heading ''Big Plans for a Small Town.'' The opening sentences: ''When Peter J. Fioretti looks at the northernmost point of Lake Hopatcong to the spot known as Glasser, he sees cottage condominiums . . . ''At the moment, this is only fantasy . . . ''The reality right now is that Glasser is an unassuming, out-of-the-way place with three rental cottages . . .'' We make the odds 100 to 1.