So I haven't updated the blog in over two months. I even skipped over my yearly post about the American Family Association's "Naughty or Nice List". I know that's unacceptable, but in my defense Skyrim exists and has been eating up an embarrassing amount of my time.
I'm working on a couple of new posts (honest), but for the time being I'd like to call attention to an important milestone that we passed last month with little fanfare. You see, December 22nd was just a few short weeks ago, which means we're less than a year away from an enormous deluge of excuses for why the world didn't end on December 21st, 2012. Indeed, I have a suspicion that December 22nd, 2012 is going to be a pretty strange day in some corners of the internet.
On the other hand, have you noticed that there's not been as much "2012 Apocalypse" nonsense getting mainstream attention lately? Not even the History Channel, of late a bastion of nonsense and pseudoscience, hasn't been running that many of its countless 2012 "documentaries". Hell, professional lunatic David Icke1, who under normal circumstances is all too happy to incorporate any conspiracy theory he catches wind of into his own staggeringly bizarre worldview, has denounced the 2012 hysteria as a hoax. Why do you think that is?
Well, as we've so recently learned from our eschatological friend Harold Camping, it doesn't pay to make end-of-the-world predictions that you, the prophet, are likely to live long enough to see disproved. As we get closer to seeing the backside of the 2012 nonsense, I suspect we'll see ever more defections from amongst the ranks of the apocalypse stalwarts in order to help them salvage a tiny vestige of credibility with their audience in preparation for the next big end-of-the world panic.
That's my prediction anyway, and one I'm willing to stick with to the end.
______________
1.) Yeah, the guy who thinks the world is run by a conspiracy of shapeshifting intergalactic lizard men and the Jews.
Showing posts with label apocalypse. Show all posts
Showing posts with label apocalypse. Show all posts
Monday, January 16, 2012
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
I'm Not Expecting the World to End Tomorrow...
In fact, I have some Batman comics en route that won't delivered for several days - not the course of action I'd have taken if I expected the planet to spontaneously transform into a strange quark star at some point on Wednesday.
Why am I bringing this up? Because the Large Hadron Collider is coming online tomorrow, and a couple of concerned non-physicists have made their way to the internet and NPR begun decrying it as the likely cause of the end of the world, if not the universe. Nevermind that there are several particle accelerators in the world that have yet to destroy the planet and nevermind that the LHC won't be doing anything that doesn't occur in nature; the end of the world is just so sexy! Science be damned- if we can get on the air to talk about the imminent end of existence, so much the better.
Well, again, your old pal Skippy isn't banking on the end of mankind in the morning, but luckily a website has been set up that will allow us to monitor whether or not the LHC has annihilated the planet. If you happen wonder if the the Large Hadron Collider has destroyed the world yet, just mosey on over to HasTheLargeHadronColliderDestroyedTheWorldYet.com and check for yourself.
Hopefully this will help avoid any confusion.
Why am I bringing this up? Because the Large Hadron Collider is coming online tomorrow, and a couple of concerned non-physicists have made their way to the internet and NPR begun decrying it as the likely cause of the end of the world, if not the universe. Nevermind that there are several particle accelerators in the world that have yet to destroy the planet and nevermind that the LHC won't be doing anything that doesn't occur in nature; the end of the world is just so sexy! Science be damned- if we can get on the air to talk about the imminent end of existence, so much the better.
Well, again, your old pal Skippy isn't banking on the end of mankind in the morning, but luckily a website has been set up that will allow us to monitor whether or not the LHC has annihilated the planet. If you happen wonder if the the Large Hadron Collider has destroyed the world yet, just mosey on over to HasTheLargeHadronColliderDestroyedTheWorldYet.com and check for yourself.
Hopefully this will help avoid any confusion.
Friday, June 13, 2008
The World's Still Here...
Well, as the more perceptive of you may have noticed, the planet wasn't annihilated in an enormous nuclear conflagration yesterday. Yisrayl Hawkins' website hasn't updated yet with an excuse, and the "ask Yisrayl" link is down, so the world is regrettably denied his perspective on his third spectacular failure of prophecy. To be fair though, I don't think that website gets updated much - the "Current News" section's latest article is from July of last year - so maybe it'll be a few weeks before he gets around to telling us about how he miscalculated or his God decided to give the world a reprieve.
Apparently poor Yisrayl just hasn't quite mastered the art of prophecy, which is actually pretty simple as long as you follow a few simple rules:
1.) Be vague - The vaguer you are in your predictions, the more likely it is that something will happen that seems to match up with what you said.
2.) Never set dates - This is very, very important. Nothing spoils a good prophecy like being flat-out wrong, and concrete dates have a way of falsifying what are otherwise damn fine crazy pronouncements. If you must set a date, set it far enough in the future that you'll probably be dead by the time it arrives. That way you don't have to answer any questions that might come up.
3.) Make "predictions" about things that have already happened - Whether it's forging prophecies after some dramatic event has occurred or just basing your prophecies on historical events, this technique works almost distressingly well. Sylvia Browne has pioneered a modified version of this: Claim that you had a crystal clear vision of [dramatic news item] but that you didn't get the chance to warn people before it came to pass.*
4.) Predict things that are obvious - War in the middle east. Political infighting in the United States. Bad weather and natural disasters. Take your pick - all of these things are dramatic and unpredictable, but also commonplace enough that they're safe predictions to make.
5.) More prophecies = More hits - Also called the shotgun approach, the strategy here is to make as many predictions as possible, because if you put enough of them out there surely some of them are going to seem correct.
For a cool, readable discussion about these rules and few others in the context of Nostradamus, the king of huckster pseudo-prophets, I strongly recommend The Mask of Nostradamus by James Randi. Also worth checking out is Randi's ever-growing list of end of the world prophecies that failed.
*This was Browne's excuse for failing to predict the September 11th attacks, even though she was on Larry King Live just a week before the attacks.
Apparently poor Yisrayl just hasn't quite mastered the art of prophecy, which is actually pretty simple as long as you follow a few simple rules:
1.) Be vague - The vaguer you are in your predictions, the more likely it is that something will happen that seems to match up with what you said.
2.) Never set dates - This is very, very important. Nothing spoils a good prophecy like being flat-out wrong, and concrete dates have a way of falsifying what are otherwise damn fine crazy pronouncements. If you must set a date, set it far enough in the future that you'll probably be dead by the time it arrives. That way you don't have to answer any questions that might come up.
3.) Make "predictions" about things that have already happened - Whether it's forging prophecies after some dramatic event has occurred or just basing your prophecies on historical events, this technique works almost distressingly well. Sylvia Browne has pioneered a modified version of this: Claim that you had a crystal clear vision of [dramatic news item] but that you didn't get the chance to warn people before it came to pass.*
4.) Predict things that are obvious - War in the middle east. Political infighting in the United States. Bad weather and natural disasters. Take your pick - all of these things are dramatic and unpredictable, but also commonplace enough that they're safe predictions to make.
5.) More prophecies = More hits - Also called the shotgun approach, the strategy here is to make as many predictions as possible, because if you put enough of them out there surely some of them are going to seem correct.
For a cool, readable discussion about these rules and few others in the context of Nostradamus, the king of huckster pseudo-prophets, I strongly recommend The Mask of Nostradamus by James Randi. Also worth checking out is Randi's ever-growing list of end of the world prophecies that failed.
*This was Browne's excuse for failing to predict the September 11th attacks, even though she was on Larry King Live just a week before the attacks.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
The End of the World...Today?
Well crap. If only I'd listened to Texas prophet Yisrayl Hawkins - then I'd have gotten expedited shipping on the copy of Rambo that I bought online over the weekend. Turns out, according to this yahoo, that the world is going to end today! Hawkins is the leader of the House of Yahweh in Abilene, Texas. It's a cult/survivalist group that expounds a weird mixture of Judaism and Christianity that is predicated on Hawkins' secret knowledge of the magical lost name of God. Hawkins and his brother, whose name is apparently "J.G.", came back from a trip to Israel in the 1970s convinced that their coming was prophesied by both Testaments of the Bible and that their mission was to revive the world's one true religion and deliver magical tidings to all mankind about the coming end of the world. That whole line sounds sort of familiar, doesn't it?
Hawkins has written innumerable books, including this one in which he makes Scientology-like claims about "billions" of aliens influencing life on earth and this one in which he explains how "Birthdays, Christmas, Halloween, Easter, Thanksgiving," and countless other things are actually Devil worship. Those of you who look him up on Amazon will also note that he's written a bunch of his own scriptures, which he quotes at length when he's challenged on his theology. (It must take a pretty big sack to write your own entire Testament in modern times and then try to convince people that it's real...and yet the existence of the House of Yahweh and the Mormons prove that enough people will buy into it to perpetuate it as a religion.)
Always cavalier when it comes to his conclusions about observable reality, Hawkins made a recent appearance on Nancy Grace in which he stated that "scripture shows" that global warming is being caused by sexually transmitted diseases. He's also been predicting the end of the world for years. He first said that it would end in September of 2006, then on June 12 of last year, and finally he concluded that it would end today with the start of an enormous nuclear war.
A quick tour of his website is somewhat instructive. Among other things, Hawkins (who has been charged twice with bigamy) glories in the return by the Texas Supreme Court of 400 children to the child raping FLDS cult at the Yearning for Zion Ranch. He also rants and raves about "Mary worship", which is a fundie code word for Catholicism, and constantly tries to invoke the First Amendment in order to stop the press from criticizing him.* I'm currently reading an article about how "persecuted" he is by the public at large for telling folks that the world is going to end this afternoon, though he doesn't seem to mention his repeated failed prophecies from before. He is quick, however, to invoke the Holocaust as proof of a conspiracy against him (somehow), which frankly is pretty disgusting.
In any event, once today is over with and the world is still here, it should be interesting to see what he has to say for himself. If the precedent set by Hawkins and every other prophet is any indication, he'll announce that he miscalculated and the end of the world will be next year.
* Here's a hint Yisrayl: The First Amendment does a lot of things - it guarantees you the right to this crazy religion you made up, it guarantees the right of the press to report on you being a nutjob and a bigamist, and it guarantees me the right to make fun you about it. It also guarantees you the right to rant and rave on your website about anything and anyone you like so long as you're not knowingly lying or threatening violence. Turns out we all win. :-D
Hawkins has written innumerable books, including this one in which he makes Scientology-like claims about "billions" of aliens influencing life on earth and this one in which he explains how "Birthdays, Christmas, Halloween, Easter, Thanksgiving," and countless other things are actually Devil worship. Those of you who look him up on Amazon will also note that he's written a bunch of his own scriptures, which he quotes at length when he's challenged on his theology. (It must take a pretty big sack to write your own entire Testament in modern times and then try to convince people that it's real...and yet the existence of the House of Yahweh and the Mormons prove that enough people will buy into it to perpetuate it as a religion.)
Always cavalier when it comes to his conclusions about observable reality, Hawkins made a recent appearance on Nancy Grace in which he stated that "scripture shows" that global warming is being caused by sexually transmitted diseases. He's also been predicting the end of the world for years. He first said that it would end in September of 2006, then on June 12 of last year, and finally he concluded that it would end today with the start of an enormous nuclear war.
A quick tour of his website is somewhat instructive. Among other things, Hawkins (who has been charged twice with bigamy) glories in the return by the Texas Supreme Court of 400 children to the child raping FLDS cult at the Yearning for Zion Ranch. He also rants and raves about "Mary worship", which is a fundie code word for Catholicism, and constantly tries to invoke the First Amendment in order to stop the press from criticizing him.* I'm currently reading an article about how "persecuted" he is by the public at large for telling folks that the world is going to end this afternoon, though he doesn't seem to mention his repeated failed prophecies from before. He is quick, however, to invoke the Holocaust as proof of a conspiracy against him (somehow), which frankly is pretty disgusting.
In any event, once today is over with and the world is still here, it should be interesting to see what he has to say for himself. If the precedent set by Hawkins and every other prophet is any indication, he'll announce that he miscalculated and the end of the world will be next year.
* Here's a hint Yisrayl: The First Amendment does a lot of things - it guarantees you the right to this crazy religion you made up, it guarantees the right of the press to report on you being a nutjob and a bigamist, and it guarantees me the right to make fun you about it. It also guarantees you the right to rant and rave on your website about anything and anyone you like so long as you're not knowingly lying or threatening violence. Turns out we all win. :-D
Monday, January 14, 2008
UFO and/or Antichrist Sighted in Texas...?
CNN's website has picked up an Associated Press story to the the effect of "some folks in Texas saw what they think was a UFO, and furthermore some of them think it may be a sign of the coming apocalypse." It's the typical silent, silver, seamless wonder with no visible riveting apparently free-moving running lights that the aliens have been sporting for years now. (I guess the Zeta Reticulans don't by into the whole "new models every year" paradigm we earthlings use for our vehicles.) The only wrinkle this time is that one of the witness is saying that it's at least a mile long and have a mile across. The same witness, commercial freight pilot Steve Allen, is quoted as saying (and I'm not kidding) "It was positively, absolutely, nothing from these parts."
I think a quote from Philip J. Klass out of his book UFOs: The Public Deceived* might be instructive here: "No human observer, including experienced flight crews, can accurately estimate either the distance/altitude or the size of an unfamiliar object in the sky, unless it is in very close proximity to a familiar object whose size or altitude is known."
For a fun illustration of how hard it is to judge the size of a flying object, here's a clip from that History Channel show "Monster Quest" in which people are asked to guess the size of a large bird-shaped kite being flown away from any good reference points. Check out how wildly their estimates vary.
Well, in any event, I'm interested to see how much play this Texas UFO gets. It's front page news on CNN as I type this, so it may end up attracting a fair bit of attention. I'll be keeping my eye out for it in the coming days.
*I'm pretty sure this was also covered in UFOs Explained, but I don't have my copy handy at the moment so I can't check.
I think a quote from Philip J. Klass out of his book UFOs: The Public Deceived* might be instructive here: "No human observer, including experienced flight crews, can accurately estimate either the distance/altitude or the size of an unfamiliar object in the sky, unless it is in very close proximity to a familiar object whose size or altitude is known."
For a fun illustration of how hard it is to judge the size of a flying object, here's a clip from that History Channel show "Monster Quest" in which people are asked to guess the size of a large bird-shaped kite being flown away from any good reference points. Check out how wildly their estimates vary.
Well, in any event, I'm interested to see how much play this Texas UFO gets. It's front page news on CNN as I type this, so it may end up attracting a fair bit of attention. I'll be keeping my eye out for it in the coming days.
*I'm pretty sure this was also covered in UFOs Explained, but I don't have my copy handy at the moment so I can't check.
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