Flagg wrote:And am I the only one fucking sick of all this "ghost" and "psychic detective" shit? Especially on the various Discovery channels and Court TV?
My wife has to listen to me rant and jump up and down and roll around on the floor foaming, every time there's a "Jesus" or "Psychic" or "Ghost" show on any channel with the History/Discovery/etc bugs in the corner...
I like some of the Jesus shows where they do it from a non-religious standpoint (well, as non-religious as they can considering the main source is the Bible) and are narrated by Avery Brooks.
Ditto on that. Their Noah's Flood documentary that started out showing all the ways it could not literally be true was extremely amusing as well.
I also recall their one non-idiotic UFO documentary that took the perpsective that the sightings as though the 'legit' ones were of experimental aircraft. Least cracky UFO doc they've aired, I think.
Or one of the least. Still had some crack to it, though.
ISARMA: Daikaiju Coordinator: Just Add Radiation Justice League- Molly Hayes: Respect Hats or Freakin' Else! Browncoat Supernatural Taisen - "[This Story] is essentially "Wouldn't it be awesome if this happened?" Followed by explosions."
Reviewing movies is a lot like Paleontology: The Evidence is there...but no one seems to agree upon it.
"God! Are you so bored that you enjoy seeing us humans suffer?! Why can't you let this poor man live happily with his son! What kind of God are you, crushing us like ants?!" - Kyoami, Ran
Kanastrous wrote:
My wife has to listen to me rant and jump up and down and roll around on the floor foaming, every time there's a "Jesus" or "Psychic" or "Ghost" show on any channel with the History/Discovery/etc bugs in the corner...
I like some of the Jesus shows where they do it from a non-religious standpoint (well, as non-religious as they can considering the main source is the Bible) and are narrated by Avery Brooks.
Ditto on that. Their Noah's Flood documentary that started out showing all the ways it could not literally be true was extremely amusing as well.
Yeah, that was a pretty good one from what I remember of it. I always get annoyed by the ones that try to find some "scientific" explanation for things like the parting of the Red Sea and the 10 plagues of Egypt, though. They always seem to ignore the single most likely explanation. You know, that some guy made it up.
I also recall their one non-idiotic UFO documentary that took the perpsective that the sightings as though the 'legit' ones were of experimental aircraft. Least cracky UFO doc they've aired, I think.
Or one of the least. Still had some crack to it, though.[/quote]
The fact that alot of the sighting in the 70's and 80's were of triangular vessels that look eerily like the F-117 is kinda telling, don't you think? Not that the majority of those were actual sightings of the Nighthawk, but I'm sure a fair number were.
I've seen UFO's myself. I just don't make the assumption that they are aliens.
We pissing our pants yet?
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-George Bernard Shaw
Dooey Jo wrote:
I've found that pretty much everything on the Discovery channels is bullshit anyway. Well, maybe not on "Travel and Living" but I've never watched that so I wouldn't know. They have this crap, "Ghost Hunters", the basic premise of which is "oh my god we cannot explain what this random guy with a mint-green polyester sweater said happened so we'll bring in a psychic to sorta confirm his story".
No, Ghost Hunters is crap on Sci-Fi channel, although Discovery Channel has shit about mediums.
Mayabird is my girlfriend
Justice League:BotM:MM:SDnet City Watch:Cybertron's Finest "Well then, science is bullshit. "
-revprez, with yet another brilliant rebuttal.
DPDarkPrimus wrote:No, Ghost Hunters is crap on Sci-Fi channel, although Discovery Channel has shit about mediums.
Well our Discovery has it; "Discovery Civilisation", though I suppose you might as well call it the Sci-fi channel (or the Hitler channel, since apart from the paranormal stuff they only show WWII documentaries, and the occasional thing about ancient cultures, which is sort of interesting sometimes)...
"Nippon ichi, bitches! Boing-boing." Mai smote the demonic fires of heck...
Returning to the subject at hand, any prediction made in a vague general tone will "come true". The reason so many of Nostradamus's predictions have been "proved" to have been valid is the projection of history onto the predictions with a bias towards finding agreement, and the discarding of any disagreeable text. See the supposed "Hitler" prediction. "Hisler is only one letter away from Hitler." Therefore, it must be true!!
Coyote: Warm it in the microwave first to avoid that 'necrophelia' effect.
Your right. My bad.
The small section of "The Lost Book of Nostradamus" that I saw was a scholar relating all the ways that Nostradamus's prediction of a genocidal German duke fits into Hitler and WW2. I could not help but be struck by the sheer stupidity of his whole argument. Complete personal bias projection.
Coyote: Warm it in the microwave first to avoid that 'necrophelia' effect.
Lord Relvenous wrote: See the supposed "Hitler" prediction. "Hisler is only one letter away from Hitler." Therefore, it must be true!!
Actually, I think it said 'Hister', which is actually even more off, but they still claim it to be one letter off...
Yeah, they have tried to say that because Hitler was born near the river Danube and supposedly it's ancient name was "Hister", then it still makes Nostradamus right.
We pissing our pants yet?
-Negan
You got your shittin' pants on? Because you’re about to Shit. Your. Pants!
-Negan
He who can, does; he who cannot, teaches.
-George Bernard Shaw
Don't knock Ghost Hunters. Maybe I'm aiming low, but I accept other peoples superstitious beliefs as something you can't change. Ghost Hunters is refreshing in that even though they believe in this stuff, 9 times out of 10 they will rule out supernatural activity and explain it naturally.
OK, it's not saying a lot, but a ghost hunter being skeptical enough to to rule only 1 out of 10 hauntings as supposedly being a real ghost is a lot more refreshing than those people who see ghosts everywhere. Know what I mean?
I was talking about this show, which, as I understand it, is quite different from the American version (having never seen it). In the ads for the show there's an old man saying, very sincerely; "mind can directly influence matter". I shoot myself every time I hear that.
Flagg wrote:Yeah, they have tried to say that because Hitler was born near the river Danube and supposedly it's ancient name was "Hister", then it still makes Nostradamus right.
Clearly, only one person has ever been born near the Danube.
The so-called 1999 prophecy is also a funny story. Unfortunately, nothing of what was prophesied happened in 1999, and you don't hear very much about that particular prophecy today, outside fiction. But I remember that it was being touted as some kind of uber-prophecy, predicting the end of the world.
"Nippon ichi, bitches! Boing-boing." Mai smote the demonic fires of heck...
Since 1999 turned out not to be the end of the world, the two 'doomsdays' that are most popular are december 21, 2012 (mayan) and (according to some people) 2028. I plan on worrying about neither.
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The easiest way to point out that Nostradamas's predictions were bogus is to simply talk about how easy it is to fit an ambiguous prediction to something after the fact.
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Whenever people bring up Nostradamus or some other "prognosticator" along the same lines, I always bring up the experiment in which participants were given a device with a switch and a light, and told to figure out how to turn on the light. Within the 15 minute test period, over 90% of participants responded that they had found a method...but the device was wired to light up randomly, and the switch was not connected at all.
Humans are wired to find patterns and similarities in things, and the patterns we find are not always really there.
Flagg wrote:And am I the only one fucking sick of all this "ghost" and "psychic detective" shit? Especially on the various Discovery channels and Court TV?
(Raises hand.) These things do NOT belong on edutainment channels like Discovery or History. Keep them on Sci-Fi or some other channel for permavirgins.
Those gun nuts do not understand the meaning of "overkill," and will simply use weapon after weapon of mass destruction (WMD) until the monster is dead, or until they run out of weapons.
They have more WMD than there are monsters for us to fight. (More insanity here.)
CaptainChewbacca wrote:Since 1999 turned out not to be the end of the world, the two 'doomsdays' that are most popular are december 21, 2012 (mayan) and (according to some people) 2028. I plan on worrying about neither.
Another really interesting and fucking odd pseudoscientific modern eschatology coincides with the Mayan Calendar. It's called Timewave Zero.
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Frank Hipper wrote:To anyone who hasn't gotten the memo; for fuck's sake people, the Maya Calendar is not going to end in 2012!
What, you mean our calender doesn't end on December 31st each year?
Mayabird is my girlfriend
Justice League:BotM:MM:SDnet City Watch:Cybertron's Finest "Well then, science is bullshit. "
-revprez, with yet another brilliant rebuttal.
WesFox13 wrote:Well, to answer your question Mike, I've not just started. I've always had this feeling that Nostra"dum"us was possibly either a misguided man or a con-artist.
I've heard speculation that Nostradamus was actually writing political commentary about Naples, and that he wrote in that ambiguous language so he wouldn't get his ass kicked by the local lords.
Frank Hipper wrote:To anyone who hasn't gotten the memo; for fuck's sake people, the Maya Calendar is not going to end in 2012!
It's not? I sure didn't get that memo.
It's only the twelfth baktun that ends in 2012, the calender then rolls over to the first piktun.
The Maya recorded dates hundreds of millions of years into the future using their calendar, a remarkable performance for something that's supposed to end in five years.
2012 is ignorant New Age bullshit of the first order, and worthy only of contempt.
Scottish Ninja wrote:The easiest way to point out that Nostradamas's predictions were bogus is to simply talk about how easy it is to fit an ambiguous prediction to something after the fact.
That would work if these people valued logic. Having argued with enough of them, I can testify that they seem to think logic is some kind of trick that scientists and skeptics use in order to confuse people.
"It's not evil for God to do it. Or for someone to do it at God's command."- Jonathan Boyd on baby-killing
"you guys are fascinated with the use of those "rules of logic" to the extent that you don't really want to discussus anything."- GC
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Darth Wong wrote:
That would work if these people valued logic. Having argued with enough of them, I can testify that they seem to think logic is some kind of trick that scientists and skeptics use in order to confuse people.
At Satan's behest, of course.
There was a good bit I remember from some History Channel biblical doc...a newly-unearthed stele from (Luxor, I think it was) showed an Egyptian army on the march, headed by a pair of soldiers carrying staves; at the top of one was the glyph for smoke, and at the top of the other was the glyph for fire...
Pillars of smoke, and pillars of fire, per Exodus. Military signalling devices, no more, no less. Since the Israelites rolled Egyptian-style, what could possibly make more sense, and be less supernatural?
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