Re: [tied] Nostradamus be damned

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