The Rocky Love Affair Continues

I was having a nice evening with History Channel yesterday. I had a cold diet coke, a warm blanket, and was chatting up some pals on aim. History Channel was showing a nice piece on the current economic crisis and behaving himself rather well. Then I saw this:



Dear History Channel,
___How could you make a fool of me again!? I told you I'm sick of your Nostradamus fixation! Nostradamus never said shit about 2012 anyway. He didn't even properly date his predictions. I would have watched your show on ancient prophecy. I would have watched all the way to the very ending where you'll have an expert with some actual credibility debunk most of what has been said. But noooo you had to put Nostradamus right there in the fucking title. I don't know why I keep coming back to you.

Bitterly yours,
Courtney

P.S. Tell your buddy Discovery Channel that calling a show "Extreme Logging" doesn't make it any more interesting than if you just called it "Logging"

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

First Post! Dr. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita

I have some quirky ideas about philosophy and how everything (and I really mean everything) works. Mostly I think that everything is mathematical, and more complex than we can really comprehend. Enter theoretical physics. I'm sure I'll write more about this later. Anyway, this being the basis for my fundamental belief on how the universe works, I was very interested to see the ad for the new History Channel special on "The Next Nostradamus". According to the commercial he has come up with a formula (here's that math) that predicts events.

To the web!

Apparently this man is Dr. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita of New York University, and he is not some new bible code weirdo, but a game theorist. He has spent 25 years developing a computer program to predict international events. The CIA uses him as a resource and according most sources, he's right 90 percent of the time. I don't know what they used to define right and wrong, so take that with a grain of salt, but this guy has really caught my attention.

Read much more about him at Good Magazine here

If there is one overriding mathematical law dictating the universe, maybe this guy has cracked a part of it. I'll watch the show and do a little more digging and probably post about this one again.