Re: [tied] Nostradamus be damned

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 9448
Date: 2001-09-13

The page is accessible now (lest anyone should think that the apalled author has destroyed it). Here's the original text:
 
In the City of God there will be a great thunder. Two brothers torn apart by Chaos, while the fortress endures, the great leader will succumb.
 
Matches:
 
a great thunder -- crashing planes
two brothers -- the WTC towers (why brothers? er.. why not?)
the fortress -- the Pentagon
 
Mismatches:
 
New York/Washington -- the City of God ?
the great leader -- ???
 
Of course it's a stupid game, especially in these tragic circumstances, but it illustrates the way such instinctive pattern-matching works. The apparent partial filfilment of a prophecy is so captivating that it makes us blind to any non-matching parts (the same happens in language comparison if you concentrate on "matches" and ignore inconvenient mismatches). Now perhaps we could shelve Nostradamus and talk about something serious.
 
Piotr
 
 
 
 
----- Original Message -----
From: fhb
To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2001 7:36 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] Condolences and Nostradamus

--- tgpedersen@... escribió: > --- In
cybalist@......
> A reader had sent a quatrain from Nostradamus to
> Berlingske Tidende:
>
>
> In God's city there is a great thunder.
> The great leader will perish.
> Two brothers will be torn part by chaos.
> ...
> The third great war will begin
> when the great city burns.
>


This is NOT from Nostradamus. A Canadian student wrote
the three first lines in a webpage in 1997. He wanted
to show he could create such a generic and ambiguous
prophesy that it, after a few years, should fit with
something, just to show that Nostradamus prophesies
are just a FRAUD. The lines about "third great war..."
have been ADDED.

I visited that webpage yesterday but now it is not
available.

This is the link:

http://www.ed.brocku.ca/~nmarshal/nostradamus.htm