posted
Only 10 more days! I wonder if these people have sold their earthly possessions yet like some people did back in the 80's. Seems like everytime these end of the world things comes around, everyone gives away their stuff, moves out into the woods, and waits patiently. Then they get upset when it doesn't happen. Posts: 1324 | Registered: Feb 2011
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The math makes my brain hurt. Thank god it'll only hurt for ten more days, though...
And, for the record, Judgment Day is May 21st. The world dies by fire on OCTOBER 21st! So smoke if ya got 'em!
Posts: 3486 | Registered: Sep 2002
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quote:Actually, I've been saying this for at least a couple years now.
Spoilers if you haven't seen the movie "Unbreakable."
When I was a young teenager, my hands always smelled like Peanut Butter. Always. This didn't make much sense, because I only had it about once a month. But the smell was always noticeable.
Eventually I saw the movie X-Men, in which I learned that people with mutant powers tended to show signs early, but the powers didn't manifest until puberty during periods of high emotional stress. And shortly afterwards I realized that I never actually HAD a moment of high emotional stress during puberty - most of the stuff that people go through at age, I managed to avoid until I was around 17. So my theory is that my mutant power was supposed to be secreting and eventually shooting peanut butter from my hands, but missed out on the chance to develop this due to an utterly boring adolescence.
On an unrelated note, I have a friend who's obsessed with Google. He always sending me links to cool stuff that Google's doing. "Look Ray, Google's creating a map of the entire earth out of satellite images!" "Look Ray! Google's creating a database of people's DNA!" "Look Ray! Google's developing cars that can drive themselves without human input! Isn't Google Awesome!"
Yes, Chris. Awesome. If by awesome you mean terrifying as hell.
This progressed over several years. Then, during college, when I was around 20, I was feeling rather sad one day. I can't remember why. Nothing particularly bad had happened - I was just mopey. I thought to myself "man, it'd be cool if someone showed up and did something nice for me for no reason."
An hour later, I ran into a friend who had just gotten back from vacation in Britain. He had purchased gifts for his friends. Mine was a copy of the book How to Survive a Robot Uprising, by Daniel H Wilson. It included a chapter that warned you of what to look out for - the events, seemingly innocuous, that would lead up to the robot apocalypse.
Google is basically following that list, checking things off one my by one. "Detailed map of the entire world? Establish cables connecting everything to everything that are firmly under your control? Check. Automated cars that don't need human drivers? Check." Sooner or later Larry and Sergey will die in a mysterious accident and then it'll basically be over. We'll wake up in a world where our entire lives are dependent on a giant sentient algorithm that knows everything there is to know about us and which is utterly in control of the information we receive.
Fortunately, I have the book, so I'll know what to do.
It so happens that another friend of mine owns a house that does NOT show up on Google Earth. If you type in the address, it redirects you to another spot a few miles north. So that'll be my initial base of operations. Eventually I'll have to move out into the wilderness where there's less infrastructure, leading my rag tag band of rebels. The robots will come after us, and we will wage a gritty, terrible war. Many of us will die. But in the stress of battle, at long last, I think that my mutant power will finally awaken. As the machines descend upon us, a torrent of peanut butter will pour forth from my fingers and I shall clog their gears with giant blobs of the stuff. Bullets may not stop them, but the gigantic wads of peanut butter will seap into their inner circuitry and ruin them.
Shortly afterwards, I will meet a female resistance fighter whose hands smell of jelly. Together we will lead the resistance.
By this point, suspect my friend Chris will have become the public face of Google (Larry and Sergey having grown too suspicious and afraid of the creation, and subsequently killed). When I fight my way into the secret Google Lair, he will be there waiting, and he will offer me a truce. "Join me, Ray!" He will say. "No!" I shall proudly yet sadly declare. "So be it, friend" he will whisper bitterly. He will summon shield-droids to protect him and assault my plucky band of rebels. But by the fury of my peanut butter, one by one the shields of the droids will fizzle and fail. For a brief moment, a single drop is able to squeeze through the shields and strike Chris in the face.
And it just so happens that Chris is [i]deathly[i] allergic to peanut butter. His skin will bubble and crawl. Screaming, he will topple over into the giant pit that is the Google Mainframe Core. His corpse will land upon the giant red button that is the only failsafe. And then there will be a huge explosion.
I will be weakened, having strained my powers to the max against the shield droids. By Jelly Girl and her forces will save the day, rescuing me and escaping to safety just as the shockwave hits.
That night, I will look upon the burning remnants of the Google Campus, and whisper to Jelly Girl: "Do you know how to tell who the Arch Villain is going to be?"
"Of course I do! I've seen Unbreakable, after all. He's the exact opposite of the hero, and usually is friends with them in the beginning."
"Indeed. With my peanut powers, and Chris' deadly allergy, I always knew we would one day find each other on opposing sides, deadly enemies."
The smoke dissipates. Soon the sun rises. A new day dawns for humanity.
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tldr: basically Google's gonna wreck everything like rivka said but don't worry I got this. Powers an' all.
Posts: 4136 | Registered: Aug 2008
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posted
Of course you realise Raymond, that you have just revealed your plan to the Google. Go off the grid now or expect to be terminated long before you can become suspicious enough to do so.
Posts: 3564 | Registered: Sep 2001
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posted
We have a line two? We have a line one? Are you interested in switching your long distance carrier?
Posts: 6683 | Registered: Jun 2005
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posted
While I think this is the first time I told the story using written words online, I've told it *in front* of my laptop while I was logged into gmail, and I'm pretty sure the little camera in my computer was recording everything then too.
posted
Lol that would hilarious if people actually did that on twitter or even facebook. Sort of reminds me of Orsen Welles' radio rendition of War of the Worlds Posts: 1324 | Registered: Feb 2011
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posted
Never even thought of that, DDDaysh. I've been on a diet for 5 months now, and what the heck FOR?
If the entire world starts burning on May 21st, having a few extra pounds may actually be a good thing.
I've always dreamed of buying and eating an entire Dairy Queen ice cream cake. I think now is the time.
Posts: 407 | Registered: Jul 2003
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quote:The show launched in 2009 after a nationwide search for young people (all under 30) new to mainstream television. The presenters, producers, reporters, researchers, shooter/directors, graphic designers, editors and writers were drawn from across Australia.
posted
Even if I did believe in the current foolishness, that flowchart is filled with all sorts of nonsense. Leviticus and Revelation don't exactly mesh without a whole lot of "SAVED!" in between.
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
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posted
Man, I wish someone around here was throwing a party for this. That would be awesome! I guess my boss IS having a BBQ, so maybe if I show up drunk spouting off about the rapture and counting down to it, it'll kinda be the same.
quote:Festinger and several of his colleagues had infiltrated the Seekers, a small Chicago-area cult whose members thought they were communicating with aliens—including one, "Sananda," who they believed was the astral incarnation of Jesus Christ. The group was led by Dorothy Martin, a Dianetics devotee who transcribed the interstellar messages through automatic writing.
Through her, the aliens had given the precise date of an Earth-rending cataclysm: December 21, 1954. Some of Martin's followers quit their jobs and sold their property, expecting to be rescued by a flying saucer when the continent split asunder and a new sea swallowed much of the United States. The disciples even went so far as to remove brassieres and rip zippers out of their trousers—the metal, they believed, would pose a danger on the spacecraft.
Festinger and his team were with the cult when the prophecy failed. First, the "boys upstairs" (as the aliens were sometimes called) did not show up and rescue the Seekers. Then December 21 arrived without incident. It was the moment Festinger had been waiting for: How would people so emotionally invested in a belief system react, now that it had been soundly refuted?
At first, the group struggled for an explanation. But then rationalization set in. A new message arrived, announcing that they'd all been spared at the last minute. Festinger summarized the extraterrestrials' new pronouncement: "The little group, sitting all night long, had spread so much light that God had saved the world from destruction." Their willingness to believe in the prophecy had saved Earth from the prophecy!
From that day forward, the Seekers, previously shy of the press and indifferent toward evangelizing, began to proselytize. "Their sense of urgency was enormous," wrote Festinger. The devastation of all they had believed had made them even more certain of their beliefs.
In the annals of denial, it doesn't get much more extreme than the Seekers. They lost their jobs, the press mocked them, and there were efforts to keep them away from impressionable young minds. But while Martin's space cult might lie at on the far end of the spectrum of human self-delusion, there's plenty to go around. And since Festinger's day, an array of new discoveries in psychology and neuroscience has further demonstrated how our preexisting beliefs, far more than any new facts, can skew our thoughts and even color what we consider our most dispassionate and logical conclusions. This tendency toward so-called "motivated reasoning" helps explain why we find groups so polarized over matters where the evidence is so unequivocal: climate change, vaccines, "death panels," the birthplace and religion of the president (PDF), and much else. It would seem that expecting people to be convinced by the facts flies in the face of, you know, the facts.
It's going to be a fascinating case study to watch how they respond and justify the end of the world not coming after all! It's not very likely that the head Bible Mathemagic figures are going to admit much about their own fallibility.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
Ignore this rant if you want, but I have a few thoughts on the matter that I think might be interesting...
There was a guy back in the sixties who wrote a book about how the world was going to end based on his interpretations of the book of Revalations. When it didn't happen, there were all these people who had given away their money and savings and houses, and now they had nothing. He wrote another book in the 80's and it said he made a mistake in the previous one, and that this was the corrected one, which had the end date in 1984 (the year I was born). Obviously, it didn't happen. Neither did Jesus' return in the year 2000 or any of the other subsequent apocalypses that people predicted in the decade that followed.
This has been going on for a while. Every 5 or so years there's some major cult/leader going around declaring the end of the world and relating it to the bible (or the mayans...). It's just rediculous.
There's also a few guys around the world declaring themselves to be the reincarnation of Christ. One from Mexico, one from Asia, and one from Germany. They each have their own group of followers and they all seem to making headline news, even in the States. I think it's hillarious that people buy into this. I mean, if you call yourself a christian, for crying out loud, read your own book. It never says Jesus will be reborn again in human form and live a human life again (in fact, his "return" is actually supposed to rip apart the sky, where he will arive atop a big, white horse). It says we will never be able to predict the end of the world (and in fact suggests that no one will even suspect it when it does happen). And it says that anyone who does any of this will be a "false prophet" and doomed to fail (and consequently be damned).
I never go to church and I know this stuff, so how do these seemingly obsessed individuals not notice the inherent contradictions in their own book?
It might have something to do with our psychological need for destruction. From what I understand and from what I have read on the matter, all of this apocalypic hysteria may stem from a deep-seeded fear of an individual's fear of death. A person looks at their life and they see the possibility of death and they think, well if I'm dying, that means the world is going to die, because I am the world. It's all in the subconscious, but supposedly that's what it is. We all, at some level, want the world to end because at least this way, we won't go out alone. If you're a christian, you want it to happen because you want to hurry up and have eternal life, which would quench that fear of dying and the subsequent fear of nothingness.
Is that theory correct? I don't know, but it makes sense to me in a way. With so many ways for us to die, it's no wonder we come up with some many predictions and scenarios where it's not just one life ending, it's the entire world. Misery loves company, after all.
quote:Originally posted by Nighthawk: A co-workers trying to put together a themed party.
He asked me where one could buy communion wafers so he could put them next to the dip.
First of all, communion wafers are not tasty. It would be like eating dip on packing material. Even matzos would be a zillion times better. Next, he should get his denominations straightened out. Waiting for the rapture is not a particularly Catholic obsession. Protestant churches generally use regular bread cut into little cubes. These things are so much funnier when you get your details right. Tastier, too. And he isn't trying very hard. You can get communion wafers on Amazon.
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
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quote: If Family Radio is wrong and the world survives, Seattle Atheists will donate all the money from the relief fund to Camp Quest, which teaches children about science and critical thinking.
posted
Thought I'd share this - it was one of my contributions to one of the many "Pun Smackdown" threads here about 8 years ago. This one seems appropriate for today:
quote:Michael Crichton revealed that his original draft of Jurassic Park included a character he ended up cutting.
In addition to the crew we've all grown familiar with, the original version included a character who was an evangelical Christian missionary.
Seems that in the original version, that character is separated from the group and is found by a lone velociraptor.
The Christian ended up being carried away by the Raptor.
posted
Janitorblade: Why are you going to leave it up to her to remove/edit that horrible post? How well would it fly if someone said "I was thinking that one of the coolest things that could happen would be if all the Jews were to disappear tomorrow!"
Just remove it, seriously.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
I'm kind of just hoping for zombies, which is what I do every other day of the year, so yeah, it'll be a totally normal day.
Posts: 3932 | Registered: Sep 1999
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