Sun 20 Mar 2011
WRONG
Posted by anaglyph under Hokum, Idiots, In The News, Insane People, Oops!, Science, Silly, Skeptical Thinking, Space, Stupidity, WooWoo
[20] Comments
♫ Everybody’s talks about a new world in the morning… new world in the morning so they say-ee-ay-ay… ♫ I myself don’t talk about a new world… Hey! WTF! What are you all doing here? Weren’t you killed by the earthquakes and the volcanoes and the asteroids? Goddamnit! Do you mean to say that I spent all that money on a Vivos Underground Fallout Shelter for nothing? You’re not going to tell me that noted astrologer Richard Nolle, who predicted apocalyptic events as the FULL moon approached perigee, and who was quoted on Space.com, ((Who, I hope, are still sitting in the corner with their dunce cap on…)) was wrong? Son of a bitch!
Yes loyal Cowpokes, it’s true. Once again, the unhinged blathering of a woo personage turns out to be categorically and unequivocally wrong. I’ll just say that again:
WRONG.
You can read about Space.com’s embarrassing article (which tries to pretend it’s not really quoting an astrologer), here, but for the real meat of this sandwich you need to read what Mr Nolle said, in his own waffly words:
Of course you can expect the usual: a surge in extreme tides along the coasts, a rash of moderate-to-severe seismic activity (including magnitude 5+ earthquakes, tsunami and volcanic eruptions), and most especially in this case a dramatic spike in powerful storms with heavy precipitation, damaging winds and extreme electrical activity. Floods are a big part of the picture in this case, although some of these will be dry electrical storms that spark fast-spreading wildfires. ((Gee, care to add anything else to that, Mr Nolle? Just in case that wide net misses something?))
No doubt Mr Nolle will do what all purveyors of this kind of nonsense do when they are shown to be WRONG, and start claiming everything in the vicinity as an endorsement of his prediction, including the recent tragic Japanese tsunami.
That makes this [the date of the ‘extreme supermoon’] a major geophysical stress window, centered on the actual alignment date but in effect from the 16th through the 22nd.
Geez. Even when he hedges his bets with the dates, he’s WRONG. ((I’m posting this on March 20, Australian time, so there are are still three more fudge days to go, but you know what? I’m saying here and now that in those three days nothing at all of any geophysical significance will happen. I’m sure Mr Nolle is well on his way, though, to claiming that what he REALLY meant by his predictions was that the UN would endorse military strikes on Libya. That’s the way this stuff invariably works…)) The Japanese tsunami occurred on March 11. Of course, that won’t stop him!
The March 19 SuperMoon is by far the most significant storm and seismic indicator this month, but it’s not the only one. Lesser geocosmic shock windows also up the ante for unusually strong storms ((‘Unusually strong’ could mean anything more than a bit of blustery wind.)) and moderate to severe seismic activity ((Moderate to severe? That’s really narrowing it down.)) (including ((Including??? There’s a weasel term if ever I heard one – the addition of ‘including’ actually means that this sentence says in effect: “Any earth movements of any kind”)) magnitude 5+ earthquakes, subsequent tsunami, and volcanic eruptions). These lesser windows include March 1-7 (surrounding the new moon on the 4th), March 23-26 (bracketing the lunar south declination peak on the 25th), and from late on the 31st on into early April. ((Into early April…? When’s ‘early’? April 5th? April 10th? Fuck me.))
Hahaha. Look at all that risible equivocating (I’ve enumerated all the hedging for you in the footnotes). That covers just about every possible day in March and every possible earthquake above a magnitude 5. Since the planet experiences more than 1500 earthquakes of magnitude 5 and above every year (divide that by 12 months and you get over 125 magnitude 5+ earthquakes somewhere in the world every month) Nolle can make a prediction like this with complete impunity. When you include his dates for the Super Moon, Nolle has every day in March covered except March 8 – 15 and March 27 – 30! That’s predicting 20 whole days of March might possibly have an earthquake of magnitude 5+ somewhere in the world! And he still missed March 11! Whoopsy. I guess a fucking ginormous earthquake that causes massive tidal surges and kills thousands of people is easy to overlook with that extreme spike in electrical storms and amongst all the floods and volcanic eruptions. Oh wait. None of those happened on March 19 either. ((I’ll just note here for the sake of amusement, the introduction to Mr Nolle’s pages which says in part “If you were expecting some kind of sun sign nonsense, forget about it. This is real astrology for the real world, not some mystical mumbo-jumbo word salad.” Got that? No mumbo-jumbo in this town, no way!))
So, let’s just see what scientists predicted for the approach of the Super Moon. John Bellini, a geophysicist at the U.S. Geological Survey:
Practically speaking, you’ll never see any effect of lunar perigee. It’s somewhere between ‘It has no effect’ and ‘It’s so small you don’t see any effect.’
Oh, lookit that. Once again, science is…
RIGHT.
___________________________________________________________________________
Earthquake chart purloined from IRIS with thanks. I’m pretty sure that, in the interests of proper science, they will be OK with it.
But the charts say…
The King
Only for star crossed losers. Oh, there appears to be a typo there.
“the unhinged blathering of a woo personage”
Classic
The King
Your humble servant.
But what if I’m not here anymore? Is that proof?
If you’re not here anymore, who wrote that?
I’ve asked Mr Nolle and he said he doesn’t know, he’s not here either.
He’s certainly not here. He’s on another planet entirely.
March 21. Still no major catastrophes. One slim day to go before Mr Nolle looks like a complete twat. What’s that you say? He already looks like a twat? Surely not!
Hey – I’m not getting any ‘End Times’ poemin’ here. I guess that’s because you’re all saving it up for May 21st.
I think the poemin’ing better start pretty darn quick
He sat there looking at the charts,
waiting for a rumble.
The only sound in the silent room,
were farts and tummy grumble.
The King
Sweet.
Still here…
The King
Funny that.
They can’t kill Malach anyway
I’d settle for a plague of boils.
You misunderstand the purpose of Richard Nolle’s prediction pages: the prolixity is designed to hide the fact that there are few predictions – usually confined to trouble in the money markets, volcanoes, earthquakes and tsunamis. He insists that most of the dates have to be accepted with a +/-3-day error, but as the cause of the event effects a range of dates, the predictions turn out to be quite imprecise. Pad this sort of stuff out with astrological mumbo-jumbo and some astronomy and you have an article that’s designed not to be read as a whole and certainly not to be remembered.
It’s only in subsequent prediction pages that the true purpose is revealed. April’s prediction page will celebrate any real event in March that matches a prediction on the March page – and that’s an event that can happen practically anywhere as his ‘horizon arcs’ seem to cover particularly those areas of the planet that are subject to trouble in the money markets, volcanoes, earthquakes and tsunamis.
It’s similar to a medium’s cold reading: focus on the hits and ignore the misses.
Well, sure, but as I said – it will be amusing to see him justify the foreseeing of the Japanese tsunami in hindsight since he comprehensively missed it even with all the equivocating.
But here’s the thing. Even though the tsunami fell outside of all the predicted dates for March, I can tell you right now he’ll take full credit for its augury. Just the fact that it happened in March will be enough. That he predicts earthquakes all the time will not even register with the people stupid enough to believe this flim flam.
And I’ll point out again: the +/- 3 days is also a furphy. Nolle frequently expands on this hedge zone using other techniques (such as the ‘into early April’ ploy that I mentioned in the footnotes). As you can see from my deconstruction of the March predictions he covers 21 whole days of the month with vague predictions. Anyone with even a remote grasp of math can see that it would be astonishing if he didn’t get some kind of hit!
Sorry, I forgot the bad weather and all those people who are pissed because they don’t have enough money. I had to go and lie down after reading March’s predictions (you should try the whole year prognostication page – doom on a loop). Presumably, there’s nothing good going to happen because good news doesn’t get reported.
I’m now in serious training before attempting April’s predictions by reading Nancy Lieder in depth and catching up with familyradio.com.
Make sure you come back and visit us on May 21st for our End Times Spectacular!