My Rocky Love Affair With the History Channel

My first post to this blog was about how excited I was about a documentary on the History channel about Dr. Bueno de Mesquita. I have to say, I was thoroughly disappointed by the show. Instead of an indepth look at the Doc and his computer program that predicts the future, they spent most of the show comparing him to Nostradamus, and then talking for a long time about Nostradamus.

Now, don't get me wrong, Nostradamus is pretty interesting but I got tired of hearing about him really quickly. First of all, he was probably not a prophet (although he tried pretty hard). He wrote a lot (at least 1000 I'm not sure the total number) of vague prophecies, with no definite linear chronology to assign them a specific date or time period. You go write 1000 four line verses about what might or might not happen at some point in the near or distant future. I bet you'll get a few things right too. Prophet or not, he's old news. Bueno de Mesquita might have a

computer

that can predict the

future

Oh and remember the "Lost Book of Nostradamus" special the History Channel featured a while back? You know, the one where someone found a manuscript that might have been from the time period, and might have been penned by Nostradamus, and was filled with illustrations from the major arcana of the tarot? The "experts" from this documentary claimed that the image of a burning tower (on the left), which is a traditional tarot image (see image to the right), featured among other traditional tarot images, was actually a prediction of September 11th.




















Dear History Channel,

I love you, but your weird inaccurate Nostradamus fetish has really been embarassing me lately. Please stop. Find help or something.

Love,
Courtney