Tue 10 Aug 2010
Pointy Headed
Posted by anaglyph under Bizarre, Hokum, Idiots, In The News, Skeptical Thinking, Stupidity, WooWoo
[14] Comments
Acowlyte Ed points me to this late breaking news from India which I just know you all need to know.
It appears that traffic police in Nagpur have decided that the best way to deal with road accident black spots is to install 30 centimeter tall pyramids by the roadside in order to disperse ‘negative energies’. Cos’ everyone knows that’s what causes car accidents right? Bad vibes. ((It could have NOTHING to do with the huge number of untrained Indian drivers, the atrocious roads or the lax law enforcement – factors that contribute to the deaths of more than 114,000 people in India every year…))
The brains behind this scheme is one Sushil Fatehpuria, an ‘expert’ in Vastu, a kind of Indian feng shui. “I will energise the pyramids,” he says,“I will transfer my positive thoughts into the pyramids.” Mr Fatehpuria has (quite surprisingly, considering) offered his services free of charge.
I can see the reasoning behind Mr Fatehpuria’s idea – how many car accidents did the Ancient Egyptians have? Yeah – find fault with that logic if you can!
Personally, though, I think that Mr Fatehpuria is not really making a big enough commitment. Why not campaign for the the introduction of pyramid-shaped cars such as the one above featured on Geekologie? ((You should go visit Geekologie – they are cool dudes.)) Surely these cars would be completely accident proof!!!! And why stop at piddly little 30cm pyramids? What about putting in some really big motherfuckers – that’s unquestionably going to have a much greater effect! I’m sure there are some statistics to show the dramatic reduction in car accidents in Cairo and Las Vegas!
Of course it is conceivable that pyramid power works on some kind of homeopathic principle, meaning that the smaller the pyramid is the more effective its powers. In which case, Mr Fatehpuria is wasting his money with those whopping huge 30cm behemoths.
Damn. This new-fangled science is SO confusing!
(Quite coincidentally, while I was writing this, a documentary came on the History channel about pyramids. The basic gist of it was that the Ancient Egyptians couldn’t possibly have built the pyramids with the technology they had to hand, and the purpose of these huge stone monoliths was to generate microwave power via hydrogen ((I didn’t quite follow that bit…)) to communicate with aliens. I have three observations to make:
1. This is not HISTORY.
2. I’m scared that because it’s on the HISTORY channel, some people think it is.
3. There is a lot of stuff on the HISTORY channel that is like this…)
What makes you so sure that it’s not history? And you should be scared because the majority of humankind do believe there are other life forms outside this little blue ball. Can anyone say Stephen Hawking?
Believing in something doesn’t make it so. And just because lots of people believe in something doesn’t make it any more so.
That certainly is true, you just have to look at religions to see that.
Indeed. So why should it be any different for anything else?
Oh, don’t get me started on the pseudo-History channel. There was some gibberish on there yesterday about how aliens *must* have visited ancient earth and helped early humans to develop because several cultures have myths that could be interpreted to refer to aliens, if you turn your head a bit to one side, squint, and chug a fifth of vodka.
The “best” moment was when they talked about the Chinese myth of their first emperor coming down to earth on a dragon and uniting the country. The strongest evidence they could muster is that dragons are associated with smoke and fire, with an immediate cut to the smoke and fire of the space shuttle taking off. My facepalm could be heard right across the mealroom.
The thing about all this stuff is that you don’t need to invoke aliens. There are some mysteries about how the ancients did things, but they’re not supernatural mysteries. And for the most part, we know how they did stuff. There is, for example, no mystery as to how the pyramids were built. Some of the details might be unclear, but in a general sense, they just used a LOT of people over a LOT of time.
All the guff that they trotted out on the show about how ‘we couldn’t even do it with the technology we have today’ is risible. There is nothing that’s in a pyramid that couldn’t be replicated with modern tools, if you had the werewithal. And there is nothing in a pyramid that couldn’t have been built with the technology available to the Ancient Egyptians, as much as the makers of the show tried to suggest there was.
Stephen Hawking can’t say Stephen Hawking.
But he has alien technology that can.
You need a pyramid car in L.A. It will greatly improve your GPS‘ triangulating capabilities.
Wucka wucka.
Is that a turn signal or are you cleaning your teeth?
[img]http://www.oldfishandlemonade.com/pix/bluetooth2.gif[/img]
I want a pyramid car now.
Of course you do. It’s perfect for you
Are those the new Daleks? I like the old ones better.