Saturday, May 07, 2011
Autistic apocalypse
What is it with cults and numbers? From the start, end-timers have been uniquely fascinated with raw numbers, leaving aside common sense and logic. Gematriya, 666, DaVinci Code, etc. Always steering the numbers to agree with current events, always finding a new set of numbers when the present set turns out all Oopsy.
NPR features two stories about number-obsessed cults today.
This story features the latest shit from the biggest and most tyrannical cult in history, with the usual overturning of logic. Even while noting that North America shows no recent warming trend, the trend is still called Global, and it's still caused by North America's sins. Why? Because Gaia says so, and because our secret cultic calculations based on the prophet Margaret Mead prove it without any doubt.
Seems to me that since North America isn't participating in the warming, North America isn't part of the Globe, and thus should be exempt from the Global penitence.
= = = = =
This story features a much smaller and vastly less powerful cult based on the calculations of prophet Harold Camping. These folks know that the world will end on May 21 of this year, with an earthquake that happens at 6 PM in each time zone. Hmm. What will happen at the boundaries between zones? If you're driving westward and you cross from a zone where it's just now 6 PM to a zone where it's just now 5 PM, will the back-seat passengers of your car be ruptured and raptured but not the front-seat passengers? If a city decides to advance its official time to skip over May 21, will it be exempt from the earthquake? (That's not so strange; America skipped several days in 1751 with the change from Julian to Gregorian calendars, and we skip an hour each year when we do the idiotic DST dance. Why not DST your way out of the end of the world? Sounds good to me.)
The illogic of the Camping cult only seems sillier than the illogic of the Mead cult because we're bombarded 24 hours a day with confident flat assertions of the "truth" of the Mead cult. ¶ 8:32 AM
NPR features two stories about number-obsessed cults today.
This story features the latest shit from the biggest and most tyrannical cult in history, with the usual overturning of logic. Even while noting that North America shows no recent warming trend, the trend is still called Global, and it's still caused by North America's sins. Why? Because Gaia says so, and because our secret cultic calculations based on the prophet Margaret Mead prove it without any doubt.
Seems to me that since North America isn't participating in the warming, North America isn't part of the Globe, and thus should be exempt from the Global penitence.
= = = = =
This story features a much smaller and vastly less powerful cult based on the calculations of prophet Harold Camping. These folks know that the world will end on May 21 of this year, with an earthquake that happens at 6 PM in each time zone. Hmm. What will happen at the boundaries between zones? If you're driving westward and you cross from a zone where it's just now 6 PM to a zone where it's just now 5 PM, will the back-seat passengers of your car be ruptured and raptured but not the front-seat passengers? If a city decides to advance its official time to skip over May 21, will it be exempt from the earthquake? (That's not so strange; America skipped several days in 1751 with the change from Julian to Gregorian calendars, and we skip an hour each year when we do the idiotic DST dance. Why not DST your way out of the end of the world? Sounds good to me.)
The illogic of the Camping cult only seems sillier than the illogic of the Mead cult because we're bombarded 24 hours a day with confident flat assertions of the "truth" of the Mead cult. ¶ 8:32 AM
