Nostradamus
From RationalWiki
This topic may or may not be bullshit, and is either nonsensical or idiotic.
May damage the mind and lead to drinking of the Kool-Aid.
Nostradamus was a sixteenth-century French chemist who predicted a lot of stuff. As with all visionaries, his success rate has been found to be perfect in hindsight. This is mostly due to the fact that he wrote his predictions in such broad and obtuse language that they can be forced to fit nearly any set of events:
"The river that tries the new Celtic heir Will be in great discord with the Empire: The young Prince through the ecclesiastical people Will remove the sceptre of the crown of concord."
"In the sacred temples scandals will be perpetrated, They will be reckoned as honors and commendations: Of one of whom they engrave medals of silver and of gold, The end will be in very strange torments."
Nostradamus was a Protestant in a time and place when Catholics were burning them at the stake. He couched his letters to other Protestants in obscure symbolism. These writings are today being reinterpreted as prophesies.
Some predictions by Nostradamus suggested that the world would end in 1999. [1] That didn't happen. Now they suggest 2012. And they want you to pay for the news.
Available as a Book Download ($14.95) or Softcover ($19.95)
Perhaps they hope people won't remember 1999. [2] I predict when it doesn't happen they will revise the date yet again. I do not need Precognition to predict that.
Up until 1991 when the USSR ceased to exist, Nostradamus books "predicted" a US/USSR nuclear war. None of them predicted the breakup of the Soviet Union. Cecil Adams, himself no slouch as a seer, put it best: "Nostradamus did for bullshit what Stonehenge did for rocks."
