Calculate the level of your Delusion

Found this on a REALLY old Pharyngula post.

I calculate at a neat zero XD How about you lot?

Prophecies R Us - follow-up

It looks like people are jumping to Psychicgirl's defence, for the most part.

He actually did win, but it was stolen from him through voter fraud. I wonder how many people voted multiple times?

LDC

Arrogance is mankind's worst enemy. I blind us and stops us from truly seeing with our spirint and not our history loaded minds. Clear up, cheer up, you made a mistake, now keep on going. The earth is calling you to be part of the transformation. Embrace it.

OpusDay

My own read on the circumstances and the astrology leans me towards the belief that there will be several assasination attempts against the president elect. He has been elected, not inaugerated. No one should be cocky about their predictions, or about dissing another for their predictions since everything is subject to free will.

robert.c

And Damianos has finally posted her latest Prophecy, as promised.

The hand I see placed on the bible being sworn in as President #44 is that of Hillary Clinton. The universe intended for Hillary to be our next President ------- not Barack Obama. I've said it before, he will be found guilty of treason.

Damianos

I can't wait for the swearing in to come around, I look forward to seeing if any of these prophecies actually come true XD

Oh, it will be so much fun to do a follow-up with negative results!

Prophecies R Us

After hearing the prophecies.us website mentioned on CNN last night, before the end of the election, I had to go have a look.

It's a thoroughly amusing place, really! Some of the predictions and prophecies given in that place are utterly ridiculous, but the one that caught my eye last night was the following:

mccain will win the presidential election in 2008.

i am absolutely certain of this and i am only posting it here for proof prior to the date like a postmark to prove my prediction.

my abilities have been validated by a university with an average hit rate of 80%.

i am not a democrat, i am not a republican.

the outcome of an election is irrelevant to me.i am not political and believe that you create your own reality despite who is in the white house. you are the weaver of your destiny and share in shaping the destiny of the planet. no man or woman in political power can save you. no man or woman can pay your bills, win a war, save the planet, stop poverty or feed the hungry. you and i create reality. placing your faith in politics is not good. it abdicates you from responsibility for your life. politics are always corrupt despite the best efforts of the people involved to be good people. their intentions are good but they serve too many interests. i believe in serving your fellow man and uplifting everyone around you.

the mccain people are welcome to contact me and thank me. the obama people can hate me. i have a gift, granted by the universe, higher power, god or whatever you might term it... neither mccain nor obama can take that from me.

Psychicgirl.

Aside from her terrible grammar and spelling, it was the 'validated by a university with an average hit rate of 80%' thing that got me.

What university? What tests did they run? Is the research available for perusal? Did they have any peer-reviewed papers released? I'd like to know! If her hit-rate is that high, she aught to be very well documented and lauded from on high!

But seriously.

It's pretty safe to say that this girl was about as wrong as it gets, but someone commenting on her prophecy seems to be trying to give her an out:

Obama won the election...but he won't be the one inaugurated as President. Read my upcoming prediction which should be posted here eitehr today or tomorrow to find out who our President will be.

Damianos.

I eagerly await her 'upcoming prediction' as it hasn't appeared yet. I have a feeling hers will be just as bad and just as wrong as PsychicGirl's was.

PsychicGirl has yet to respond to the actual results of the Election - I have the uncanny feeling that she'll just disappear and refuse to acknowledge her rather public 'miss'.

A further comment from someone named 'KK' has this to say on the subject:

If McCain is considered the winner. It will be due to another election stolen by the electronic voting machines with no paper trail that go through the RNC servers. These are the same servers that mysteriously lost all the Bush admin's emails. Not by voter fraud but by election fraud. This happened in 2000 and 2004 and it has been proven that democrats won both elections. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice shame on me, the American public will not be fooled a third time. We are ready to take back our country.

KK

So will PsychicGirl simply claim the results were tampered with?

Even if they were, her prediction was wrong! If she wanted to be right, she should have said 'McCain will win, but tampering with the votes will result in Obama taking the Presidency' - which of course, she didn't say.

On a more serious note, though.

This all just makes me wonder why the hell people do this. I know there is a huge belief in prophecy and prediction - world wide, as I understand it. Pretty much all religions have some form of prophecy inherent in the belief system.

What is the human fascination with prophecy? I know we are one of the few animals on this planet with the true ability to conceive of a future at all, but why do we feel this need to prophesies? Surely we can't be so scared and lonely that we need these stories to make ourselves feel better?

And what about this strange fascination with psychic abilities? From reading through the above linked website, it appears there are a great many people who falsely believe they have some psychic ability to see the future - god given or otherwise.

Why? It's just yet another delusion we blind ourselves with. For the most part, these things are simply coincidental dreams (and even a basic understanding of The Law Of Truly Large Numbers will explain those to anyone who cares to give it even a modicum of thought) yet no-one seems to want to tell these people this simple fact.

I feel it is at least midly dangerous for us to humour these people. To allow them these delusions, allows them to delude themselves in other fashions. And as we all know, that just leads to further problems and possible tragedy.

(Think the religious family's that refuse to medicate their horrendously ill children - an extreme, but highly realistic end point to allowing people their dangerous delusions.)

What we need to do is to explain to these people that coincedence is far more common than they want to believe. We need to point out the many many times they've dreamed something and it hasn't come true (because, believe you me, there are far more of those types of dreams, than the ones that do come true in some fashion or other.)

Until people are made aware of these things, this ridiculous obsession with prophesy and pyschic abilities is going to continue. And while websites like prophecies.us can prove amusing, I fear they can also prove detrimental.

I've even heard it mentioned that some truly right-wing fundy types voted for Obama because they believe he's the Anti-Christ and they believe he's going to bring about Armageddon! Which is just unutterably stupid and proves my point.


Edit:

It get's worse, I just discovered their forum.

It covers all the bases - from The Bible Code to Tarot Cards. It makes fascinating reading - but bloody hell, these people must surely be on something >>

Congratulations Obama

Yes - Congratulations to the Democrats and America for a record breaking turn-out and the first African-American President!

However, as Pharyngula has said, America still faces it's wealth of problems.

After 8 years of Bush - how could it not? There's still two wars for Obama to sort out, for a start.

Obama is by no means a radical Christian, but he's still religious, as is most of the American Political system, much to the detriment of the country, if you ask me.

While the African-American community is celebrating, (as is Kenya, amusingly) there's also going to be a great many racists out there, with guns no less, who are less than happy about his election.

(I'm getting flash-backs to the double episode end of season one, beginning of season two West Wing here - anyone else?)

There are other things, but the one that gets to me the most, is that Prop8 got through in California.

Way to alienate a substantial percentage of the Californian population!

Well. At least Palin isn't the VP, eh?

What is it with conspiracy theorists?

Re: your video about the number 11

To put it bluntly, all you've done is (very biasedly, might I add) ascribe meaning to a random number and search for words, phrases, names, titles and so on that fit to that pre-determined number/meaning combination.
There is nothing meaningful to any of this, certainly nothing beyond what you add to it yourself, in your own head.
You can choose any number you like and do the same thing and still find hundreds of words, phrases, names and titles that fit. It's not a conspiracy, it's selective thinking and personal bias.
Guess what - there's a whole huge list of eleven letter words out there, here's a few of them for you:
buckskinned bucktoothed bucolically budgerigars buffalofish buffleheads bulkinesses bullbaiting bulldoggers bulldogging bulletining bulletproof bullfighter bullfinches bullishness bullmastiff bullterrier bullwhipped bullyragged bumbershoot bumpinesses bumptiously bureaucracy bureaucrats burglarious burglarized burglarizes burgomaster burlesquely burlesquers burlesquing burlinesses burnishings bushinesses bushmasters bushrangers bushranging bushwhacked bushwhacker businessman businessmen butterballs butterflied butterflies butterflyer buttermilks
And that's just a selection from the 'B's.

James Randi on Homeopathy

Randi makes it easy to understand.

Sarah Palin v Drosophila Research

At 5:10 into the above video:
"I'm going to be as restrained and measured as I possibly can; but this is the most mindless, ignorant, uninformed comment that we have seen from Sarah Palin in this campaign so far, and there's been a lot of competition for that prize ... if you deliver your first serious policy speech and you make this kind of basic error, you either don't have a scientific advisor, or you don't have a speechwriter who knows what they're saying."






This time last year, Prime Minister Gordon Brown formally added his support for extra funding to get children as young as 8 interested in science.

Can you spot the difference between what McCain/Palin is advocating, and what Brown is advocating? I may not much like Labour these days, but at least they're not fucking the sciences.

I swear, if McCain gets voted in, the whole damn world will suffer for it. America is far too influential, politically and economically, for it not to have a world-wide effect.

The Face of Proposition 8

The Face of Proposition 8 from Theremina on Vimeo.

This footage was recorded 10/23/08 in Oakland, CA, on a public street corner near Lake Merritt. I was on my way home from the Lakeshore district when I encountered this group of supporters of Prop 8 (proposition to ban gay marriage). After turning my vidphone on, I was screamed at, physically intimidated and eventually attacked by one of the sign-wavers.

To read the whole entry, go here.

Video and article by Theremina.



If I was American, I'd be voting 'no'. Is it wrong of me to assume that these people probably consider themselves 'good' and 'loving' Christians?

Homeopathy Again

Remember that Homeopathy essay I wrote back in July? Well, the other day I recieved a couple of comments on it (two, apparently JB couldn't figure out that my comments are now moderated.)

I won't repost his comment, mostly because it was too damn long and I can't be bothered beyond linking you guys to it in the link above.

I am not a scientist, I don't even profess to understand much of what goes on in the sciences these days, I'm an artist, and it shows - I may read a lot (and these days I do read a lot more science than I did as a kid) but that doesn't give me any amazing abilities to suddenly understand everything and anything. So don't expect me to.

I will safely say, however, that everything I have read, ever, about Homeopathy shows it to be nothing but a big pile of steaming dog-turds.

If you want to read something that is more science based than my own essay, try The Calladus Blog's essay Why Homeopathic Medicine Does NOT Work. It's far better written than my own, and goes much further in depth. For those of you with a scientific background, it should fill your craving for real science (and probably make you feel sick, but that's not Calladus' fault, it's the Homeopaths.)

Suffice to say, nothing JB said in his comment changed my mind and I stand by my opinion.

Some things just ain't fair

Honestly. Is it fair that the bloke who allowed his dependant girlfriend to literally merge herself with a toilet seat, has won $40,000?

And it's not his first win either.

I despair >> srsly