Results tagged “Nostradamus Enlightenment” from Mist Net
Michel de Nostredame, also known as Nostradamus, was some guy. So anyway, this guy wrote a bunch of stupid stuff like this:
At this point my attitude toward Nostradamus is, I hope, clear. So I was taken aback to be reading an article in Slate about the recent election where I saw a reference to this celebrated bonehead. "In some of the weirder realms of the Internet, you can already find verses from Nostradamus allegedly predicting that Obama's election heralds the end of the world, and someone out there probably believes them," it read.
Yes, Anne, there probably are people who believe that. And there are probably people who believe that if you step on a crack, you will, in literal fact, break your mother's back. Many people are credulous; they believe the stupidest things you could imagine and many you can't. You wanna know what I believe myself? I believe that the Enlightenment is sagging a bit, slowly dying like Tinkerbelle, and we've got to clap for it to bring it back to glowing health. If you look at the night sky, or contemplate your own death, or feel overcome with the vastness of the human experience, well, fine, resort to whatever beliefs work for you. But in dealing with the world, in trying to accomplish goals in our lives, can we just sort of stick to reason and logic and evidence? I know, I know, magic is easy, and reason is hard, and I have the pathetic math and science grades from my youth to prove it. But reason and science work, see, and magic doesn't. Penicillin works, and eye of newt doesn't.
Where was I? What's that? How to handle Nostradamus? Oh, that's easy. Just tell anyone who brings him up not to be stupid because it's been 400 years and he hasn't predicted a damn thing. Because, you know, he hasn't. That's how to handle Nostradamus.
To the enemy, the enemy faith promisedHe made his living being an apothecary. Apothecaries were druggists whose drugs didn't work because apothecaries lived before anybody knew anything. Over the years, people with some sort of intellectual or psychological deficit would read the stupid stuff Nostradamus wrote and think it meant something because when stupid people read stupid things it sort of resonates with them. It just sounds right, somehow.
Will not be kept, the captives retained:
One near death captured, and the remainder in their shirts,
The remainder damned for being supported.
At this point my attitude toward Nostradamus is, I hope, clear. So I was taken aback to be reading an article in Slate about the recent election where I saw a reference to this celebrated bonehead. "In some of the weirder realms of the Internet, you can already find verses from Nostradamus allegedly predicting that Obama's election heralds the end of the world, and someone out there probably believes them," it read.
Yes, Anne, there probably are people who believe that. And there are probably people who believe that if you step on a crack, you will, in literal fact, break your mother's back. Many people are credulous; they believe the stupidest things you could imagine and many you can't. You wanna know what I believe myself? I believe that the Enlightenment is sagging a bit, slowly dying like Tinkerbelle, and we've got to clap for it to bring it back to glowing health. If you look at the night sky, or contemplate your own death, or feel overcome with the vastness of the human experience, well, fine, resort to whatever beliefs work for you. But in dealing with the world, in trying to accomplish goals in our lives, can we just sort of stick to reason and logic and evidence? I know, I know, magic is easy, and reason is hard, and I have the pathetic math and science grades from my youth to prove it. But reason and science work, see, and magic doesn't. Penicillin works, and eye of newt doesn't.
Where was I? What's that? How to handle Nostradamus? Oh, that's easy. Just tell anyone who brings him up not to be stupid because it's been 400 years and he hasn't predicted a damn thing. Because, you know, he hasn't. That's how to handle Nostradamus.
