2012 DOOM
Just finished watching Nostradamus 2012 on the "History" channel.
Has human reason developed so little over the last 10,000 years that we still believe this drivel? Are we so little removed from our ancestors who cowered in mud huts and feared incubi coming in to suck out their breath and threw people who could read on fires? I am flabbergasted by the sheer absurdity of every bit of dreck that my television is spouting at me right now.
It's not only the absurdity that people think that a French doctor and some Mayans might be able to accurately predict the end of the world. My brain was bent absolutely backwards by the revisionism in Nostradamian interpretation. For example, what once was a prediction interpreted to be an asteroid strike in the nebulous future has now been revised to global warming. Predictions that were intrepreted to be about the great depression (and actually more aptly describe that event) are now apparently about the modern day. Best of all, a supposed "Lost Book of Nostradamus" apparently predicts the end of the world in 2012, this being the basis for the special. Never mind the fact that the book WAS NOT WRITTEN BY NOSTRADAMUS and was in fact a book written 300 years before he lived predicting the lives and trials of future Popes. The "History" channel special of course decides to omit this fact, as do all of the crackpots they gave television time on the program.
These people clearly have no concept or understanding of history either. One of the crackpots pointed to a "Crusade in Messopotamia" that apparently ends in disaster as having to be the Iraq War, because, in his words "There has never been a crusade that has targeted what is modern day Iraq." This was significant they say, and predict massive world catyclysm in 2012 because apparently this crusade would meet with defeat in the middle of time of colossal turmoil and worldwide warfare.
Oh ho! Has there not been a "crusade" into Messopotamia sir? I think you just MAY be mistaken. You see, there was this little conflct that occured between 1914-1918 that you might have heard of called World War I (though I prefer The Great War). In said conflict, the Ottoman Empire was wooed into the Central Powers by Germany. In an effort to inspire their muslim subjects to fight in this massively unpopular war, the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire declared a Jihad against the Allied Powers, making the war an official holy war. In a response to this, the British Empire cooked up an invasion of the Ottoman Empire from its vulnerable back door, via the Persian Gulf into Iraq. Now, to those that claim that this was a successful expedition, you aren't looking at the initial invasion in which a force of 31,000 British troops under General Charles Townshend was repulsed from Baghdad, surrounded at the city of Kut and annalhiated by the Turks in December 1915. A later, much larger invasion took Baghdad from the Ottomans in 1918. Seriously, didn't these doofuses ever see Lawrence of Arabia?
Of course, Nostradamus' prediction concerned neither of these events, because he was about as clairvoyant as my pet cat.
The most gargantuan horror is that there are people that are watching this and buying every little thing that's said. It's like when someone gets a chain mail telling them that they were forced to buy a $50,000 cookie recipe from Sears and they forward it in indignation to all their friends without even making the most insignificant attempt to find out if the mail was actually true.
Now they're talking about Edward Cayce, oh boy, it's going to be a long night. Amazing Randi, please live forever.
Has human reason developed so little over the last 10,000 years that we still believe this drivel? Are we so little removed from our ancestors who cowered in mud huts and feared incubi coming in to suck out their breath and threw people who could read on fires? I am flabbergasted by the sheer absurdity of every bit of dreck that my television is spouting at me right now.
It's not only the absurdity that people think that a French doctor and some Mayans might be able to accurately predict the end of the world. My brain was bent absolutely backwards by the revisionism in Nostradamian interpretation. For example, what once was a prediction interpreted to be an asteroid strike in the nebulous future has now been revised to global warming. Predictions that were intrepreted to be about the great depression (and actually more aptly describe that event) are now apparently about the modern day. Best of all, a supposed "Lost Book of Nostradamus" apparently predicts the end of the world in 2012, this being the basis for the special. Never mind the fact that the book WAS NOT WRITTEN BY NOSTRADAMUS and was in fact a book written 300 years before he lived predicting the lives and trials of future Popes. The "History" channel special of course decides to omit this fact, as do all of the crackpots they gave television time on the program.
These people clearly have no concept or understanding of history either. One of the crackpots pointed to a "Crusade in Messopotamia" that apparently ends in disaster as having to be the Iraq War, because, in his words "There has never been a crusade that has targeted what is modern day Iraq." This was significant they say, and predict massive world catyclysm in 2012 because apparently this crusade would meet with defeat in the middle of time of colossal turmoil and worldwide warfare.
Oh ho! Has there not been a "crusade" into Messopotamia sir? I think you just MAY be mistaken. You see, there was this little conflct that occured between 1914-1918 that you might have heard of called World War I (though I prefer The Great War). In said conflict, the Ottoman Empire was wooed into the Central Powers by Germany. In an effort to inspire their muslim subjects to fight in this massively unpopular war, the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire declared a Jihad against the Allied Powers, making the war an official holy war. In a response to this, the British Empire cooked up an invasion of the Ottoman Empire from its vulnerable back door, via the Persian Gulf into Iraq. Now, to those that claim that this was a successful expedition, you aren't looking at the initial invasion in which a force of 31,000 British troops under General Charles Townshend was repulsed from Baghdad, surrounded at the city of Kut and annalhiated by the Turks in December 1915. A later, much larger invasion took Baghdad from the Ottomans in 1918. Seriously, didn't these doofuses ever see Lawrence of Arabia?
Of course, Nostradamus' prediction concerned neither of these events, because he was about as clairvoyant as my pet cat.
The most gargantuan horror is that there are people that are watching this and buying every little thing that's said. It's like when someone gets a chain mail telling them that they were forced to buy a $50,000 cookie recipe from Sears and they forward it in indignation to all their friends without even making the most insignificant attempt to find out if the mail was actually true.
Now they're talking about Edward Cayce, oh boy, it's going to be a long night. Amazing Randi, please live forever.