The Guardian newspaper, on June 24th 2008, has an article by Sue Hartley about her views on the film “The Happening” and its plot of a Mother Nature attack on humanity. It says,
In The Happening, nature strikes back at mankind by releasing a toxin from trees that causes people to commit suicide.
The Happening suggests, correctly, that vegetation can react to attack. For instance, there are some plants that protect themselves from herbivores trying to eat them by releasing volatile compounds to attract wasps - which then attack the herbivores.
However, these airborne signals don't go very far. For small plants, the furthest a signal can travel is 15 to 30 centimetres. From trees, it's perhaps 10 metres - but that's still not enough to provoke an epidemic.
People are very keen on the idea of some kind of unified force of nature, a "Gaia force" that keeps the world in balance; but there is no real evidence for this.
There is a tiny grain of scientific truth in The Happening, diluted by a massive amount of utter fantasy.
Sue Hartley is a professor of ecology at the University of Sussex.
This film is more propaganda by the climate change people who want to force you to love the planet as a god and worship it. They see people as a cancer on the earth and if Mother Nature kills a million here or there then good, it is just her way of keeping mankind in its place. They seem to love nature more than people.
Saturday, 28 June 2008
Friday, 27 June 2008
Popcorn Nukes
The New Scientist magazine, on 26th June 2008, has an article about the possibility of nuclear bombs going off by accident. It says,
You might think nuclear weapons have been carefully designed not to go off by accident. Yet more than 1700 of them have design flaws that could conceivably cause multiple warheads to explode one after another – an effect known as "popcorning" - according to a UK Ministry of Defence safety manual.
However, a nuclear-weapons safety manual drawn up by the MoD's internal nuclear-weapons regulator argues that this standard single-point design might not be enough to prevent popcorning.
Stefan Michalowski, a senior scientist at the OECD in Paris, France, who researched warhead safety at Stanford University in California in the 1990s, is concerned about the risks of an extreme event such as a firefight with direct gunshots. "The explosion of a boatload of missiles in a port would be an unimaginable catastrophe," he says. "It's a very, very scary thought."
A spokeswoman for the MoD told New Scientist that although it is "a theoretical possibility", popcorning is "a scenario that is not credible".
You might think nuclear weapons have been carefully designed not to go off by accident. Yet more than 1700 of them have design flaws that could conceivably cause multiple warheads to explode one after another – an effect known as "popcorning" - according to a UK Ministry of Defence safety manual.
However, a nuclear-weapons safety manual drawn up by the MoD's internal nuclear-weapons regulator argues that this standard single-point design might not be enough to prevent popcorning.
Stefan Michalowski, a senior scientist at the OECD in Paris, France, who researched warhead safety at Stanford University in California in the 1990s, is concerned about the risks of an extreme event such as a firefight with direct gunshots. "The explosion of a boatload of missiles in a port would be an unimaginable catastrophe," he says. "It's a very, very scary thought."
A spokeswoman for the MoD told New Scientist that although it is "a theoretical possibility", popcorning is "a scenario that is not credible".
Tuesday, 24 June 2008
Earth 'not at risk' from collider
The BBC web site, on 24th June 2008, has an article about a report that says there is no danger of the new CERN particle accelerator creating black holes and swallowing the earth. It says,
Our planet is not at risk from the world's most powerful particle physics experiment, a report has concluded.
Critics are worried that mini-black holes made at the soon-to-open facility on the French-Swiss border might threaten the Earth's very existence.
Most physicists believe the risk of a cataclysm lies in the realms of science fiction. But there have been fears about the possibility of a mini-black hole - produced in the collider – swelling so that it gobbles up the Earth.
Critics have previously raised concerns that the production of weird hypothetical particles called strangelets in the LHC could trigger the mass conversion of nuclei in ordinary atoms into more strange matter - transforming the Earth into a hot, dead lump.
The scientific consensus appears to be on the side of Cern's theorists.
The idea of the CERN project is to explore the unknown. All of the concerns about the possible dangers are based on theories and all of the rebuttals are also based on theories. It is only the scientific consensus that wins the argument. Lets all hope there are more right guesses than wrong ones.
Our planet is not at risk from the world's most powerful particle physics experiment, a report has concluded.
Critics are worried that mini-black holes made at the soon-to-open facility on the French-Swiss border might threaten the Earth's very existence.
Most physicists believe the risk of a cataclysm lies in the realms of science fiction. But there have been fears about the possibility of a mini-black hole - produced in the collider – swelling so that it gobbles up the Earth.
Critics have previously raised concerns that the production of weird hypothetical particles called strangelets in the LHC could trigger the mass conversion of nuclei in ordinary atoms into more strange matter - transforming the Earth into a hot, dead lump.
The scientific consensus appears to be on the side of Cern's theorists.
The idea of the CERN project is to explore the unknown. All of the concerns about the possible dangers are based on theories and all of the rebuttals are also based on theories. It is only the scientific consensus that wins the argument. Lets all hope there are more right guesses than wrong ones.
Friday, 20 June 2008
Sea Level and Mass Extinction
The Daily Galaxy website, on June 19th 2008, has an article that looks at the possibility that some past extinctions were down to rising sea levels and how climate change is bring about another one. It says,
Peters' research, which recently appeared in the journal Nature, provides an intriguing perspective on one of nature’s most pervasive mysteries. Most of us correlate Earth's periodic mass extinctions with dramatic and sudden events like a blazing asteroid or a sky-blackening super volcano—the kind of things that have been linked to the demise of the dinosaurs. While dramatic events like these do appear to have played major roles in some extinction periods, they certainly haven’t accounted for all of them. Peters says that is where sea level comes into play. His research provides evidence that convincingly fills in the gaps.
But does any of this apply to us today, and if so, how? National Science Foundation (NSF) Program Manager Rich Lane believes it does. "This breakthrough speaks loudly to the future impending modern shelf extinction due to climate change on Earth," says Lane.
Lane is referring to the fact that many climate experts fear a warming climate will cause sea levels to rise with devastating consequences. The Daily Galaxy asked Peters how climate affects sea levels.
“In my opinion, a much bigger concern with respect to global warming-induced sea level rise is the human impact. A very large fraction of the world's population and infrastructure is within a few meters of sea level. Thus, even a small rise is going to wreak almost unimaginable havoc,” Peters told The Daily Galaxy. “In fact, I think the impending sea level rise is the most serious threat posed by global warming. The biosphere is well conditioned to deal with the magnitude of sea level rise that we are likely to induce. We, as a society, are not.”
So it looks like we are very close to another mass extinction by rising sea levels brought on by global warming. Is it time to run to higher ground?
Peters' research, which recently appeared in the journal Nature, provides an intriguing perspective on one of nature’s most pervasive mysteries. Most of us correlate Earth's periodic mass extinctions with dramatic and sudden events like a blazing asteroid or a sky-blackening super volcano—the kind of things that have been linked to the demise of the dinosaurs. While dramatic events like these do appear to have played major roles in some extinction periods, they certainly haven’t accounted for all of them. Peters says that is where sea level comes into play. His research provides evidence that convincingly fills in the gaps.
But does any of this apply to us today, and if so, how? National Science Foundation (NSF) Program Manager Rich Lane believes it does. "This breakthrough speaks loudly to the future impending modern shelf extinction due to climate change on Earth," says Lane.
Lane is referring to the fact that many climate experts fear a warming climate will cause sea levels to rise with devastating consequences. The Daily Galaxy asked Peters how climate affects sea levels.
“In my opinion, a much bigger concern with respect to global warming-induced sea level rise is the human impact. A very large fraction of the world's population and infrastructure is within a few meters of sea level. Thus, even a small rise is going to wreak almost unimaginable havoc,” Peters told The Daily Galaxy. “In fact, I think the impending sea level rise is the most serious threat posed by global warming. The biosphere is well conditioned to deal with the magnitude of sea level rise that we are likely to induce. We, as a society, are not.”
So it looks like we are very close to another mass extinction by rising sea levels brought on by global warming. Is it time to run to higher ground?
Monday, 16 June 2008
Aids? There's big money at stake
The Times newspaper had an article, on June 16th 2008, about now HIV funding and UN support doesn’t look at the real courses of the virus spreading and is more concerned about political correctness than saving lives. It says,
For all the talk of a “global pandemic”, there are two completely separate HIV epidemics in the world. One is in parts of Africa, where HIV is spread by unprotected sex between men and women who have more than one steady partner. Governments - such as Uganda's, with its “zero grazing” approach to fidelity - that recognised the perils of the custom of having concurrent sexual partners confined the epidemic. Most didn't. The result of the neglect is that in some countries up to two in five adults are infected with a fatal virus.
The second epidemic covers the rest of the globe. Nine out of ten humans (and three in ten of those infected with HIV) live in countries where the virus is spread mostly when people buy and sell sex, when they shoot up drugs, and when men have anal sex with lots of other men. Only a minority do these things in any country, but that still adds up to several million people worldwide. We know how to prevent HIV in these populations, and we have known for years that in Asia, the Americas, Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, if you do that prevention well, HIV won't spread farther. Even if you don't control HIV in these populations, it won't go all that much farther.
If we don't recognise this, we will never effectively prevent the spread of HIV. But a lot of UN agencies, governments and even Aids activists don't want to recognise it. Governments don't want to because it would mean recognising that if they want to deal with HIV they have to spend money on services for junkies, sex workers and gay men - groups that don't top the popularity stakes with voters. Ironically, they will happily fund treatments for these people with expensive medicines once they do get sick. That is more acceptable to voters than to give cheap condoms and needles to prevent them getting infected in the first place.
The article was by Dr Elizabeth Pisani, an epidemiologist who has worked as a consultant to UNAids and the WHO and is the author of The Wisdom of Whores: Bureaucrats, Brothels and the Business of Aids.
Will political correctness be history’s biggest killer? Is this a question we are allowed to ask?
For all the talk of a “global pandemic”, there are two completely separate HIV epidemics in the world. One is in parts of Africa, where HIV is spread by unprotected sex between men and women who have more than one steady partner. Governments - such as Uganda's, with its “zero grazing” approach to fidelity - that recognised the perils of the custom of having concurrent sexual partners confined the epidemic. Most didn't. The result of the neglect is that in some countries up to two in five adults are infected with a fatal virus.
The second epidemic covers the rest of the globe. Nine out of ten humans (and three in ten of those infected with HIV) live in countries where the virus is spread mostly when people buy and sell sex, when they shoot up drugs, and when men have anal sex with lots of other men. Only a minority do these things in any country, but that still adds up to several million people worldwide. We know how to prevent HIV in these populations, and we have known for years that in Asia, the Americas, Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, if you do that prevention well, HIV won't spread farther. Even if you don't control HIV in these populations, it won't go all that much farther.
If we don't recognise this, we will never effectively prevent the spread of HIV. But a lot of UN agencies, governments and even Aids activists don't want to recognise it. Governments don't want to because it would mean recognising that if they want to deal with HIV they have to spend money on services for junkies, sex workers and gay men - groups that don't top the popularity stakes with voters. Ironically, they will happily fund treatments for these people with expensive medicines once they do get sick. That is more acceptable to voters than to give cheap condoms and needles to prevent them getting infected in the first place.
The article was by Dr Elizabeth Pisani, an epidemiologist who has worked as a consultant to UNAids and the WHO and is the author of The Wisdom of Whores: Bureaucrats, Brothels and the Business of Aids.
Will political correctness be history’s biggest killer? Is this a question we are allowed to ask?
Friday, 13 June 2008
The Sun is "Dead"
The web site “www.dailygalaxy.com” has an article, on June 11th 2008, about the sun not having any sunspots and why this could lead to a new little ice age. It says,
Dark spots, some as large as 50,000 miles in diameter, typically move across the surface of the sun, contracting and expanding as they go. These strange and powerful phenomena are known as sunspots, but now they are all gone. Not even solar physicists know why it’s happening and what this odd solar silence might be indicating for our future.
Although periods of inactivity are normal for the sun, this current period has gone on much longer than usual and scientists are starting to worry—at least a little bit. Today's sun is as inactive as it was two years ago, and solar physicists don’t have a clue as to why.
Tsuneta said solar physicists aren't weather forecasters and they can't predict the future. They do have the ability to observe, however, and they have observed a longer-than-normal period of solar inactivity. In the past, they observed that the sun once went 50 years without producing sunspots. That period coincided with a little ice age on Earth that lasted from 1650 to 1700. Coincidence? Some scientists say it was, but many worry that it wasn’t.
If the world does face another mini Ice Age, it could come without warning.
Sorokhtin believes that a lack of sunspots does indicate a coming cooling period based on certain past trends and early records. In fact, he calls manmade climate change "a drop in the bucket" compared to the fierce and abrupt cold that can potentially be brought on by inactive solar phases.
Maybe this is man made just like global warming? We are pumping out millions of mega watts of radio waves and they are interfering with the natural processes going on within the sun. To stop this we need a global campaign to reduce radio wave outputs by taxing the rich and starving the poor. I am sure we can find the some evidence that this is happening from somewhere. Come, let us worship the sun as a god and force people to save the sun from radio waves. All we need now is Al Gore to make a film.
Dark spots, some as large as 50,000 miles in diameter, typically move across the surface of the sun, contracting and expanding as they go. These strange and powerful phenomena are known as sunspots, but now they are all gone. Not even solar physicists know why it’s happening and what this odd solar silence might be indicating for our future.
Although periods of inactivity are normal for the sun, this current period has gone on much longer than usual and scientists are starting to worry—at least a little bit. Today's sun is as inactive as it was two years ago, and solar physicists don’t have a clue as to why.
Tsuneta said solar physicists aren't weather forecasters and they can't predict the future. They do have the ability to observe, however, and they have observed a longer-than-normal period of solar inactivity. In the past, they observed that the sun once went 50 years without producing sunspots. That period coincided with a little ice age on Earth that lasted from 1650 to 1700. Coincidence? Some scientists say it was, but many worry that it wasn’t.
If the world does face another mini Ice Age, it could come without warning.
Sorokhtin believes that a lack of sunspots does indicate a coming cooling period based on certain past trends and early records. In fact, he calls manmade climate change "a drop in the bucket" compared to the fierce and abrupt cold that can potentially be brought on by inactive solar phases.
Maybe this is man made just like global warming? We are pumping out millions of mega watts of radio waves and they are interfering with the natural processes going on within the sun. To stop this we need a global campaign to reduce radio wave outputs by taxing the rich and starving the poor. I am sure we can find the some evidence that this is happening from somewhere. Come, let us worship the sun as a god and force people to save the sun from radio waves. All we need now is Al Gore to make a film.
Monday, 9 June 2008
Climate of suspicion
The Guardian newspaper, on 7th June 2008, has an article about how the declining global temperatures over the last 10 years do not disprove global warming. It says,
The deniers of global warming are about to latch on to a new argument. The world is cooling. And they are right - well, slightly.
In any case, we can expect the deniers to make the most of this opportunity to pour cold water on the whole climate change narrative. No year has yet been hotter than 1998, they will say. True: it was a huge El Niño year. Now we are on the way back down, they will say. Nonsense. The underlying trend remains upwards; and as every decade passes, natural cycles can do less and less to counter the growing human influence on temperature.
By late next decade, natural warming will once again combine with man-made warming to push temperature rise into overdrive. The surge that we saw through the 1980s and 1990s will resume with a vengeance. That could be the moment that climate change passes a point of no return, when ice sheets start to collapse and parched rainforests and soils dump their carbon into the air, accelerating warming.
Global warming “deniers”, being placed in the same bracket as holocaust deniers, would point to the facts, not the theories or fanciful computer models, to make their arguments. How long will it be before the next ice age is here I wonder?
The deniers of global warming are about to latch on to a new argument. The world is cooling. And they are right - well, slightly.
In any case, we can expect the deniers to make the most of this opportunity to pour cold water on the whole climate change narrative. No year has yet been hotter than 1998, they will say. True: it was a huge El Niño year. Now we are on the way back down, they will say. Nonsense. The underlying trend remains upwards; and as every decade passes, natural cycles can do less and less to counter the growing human influence on temperature.
By late next decade, natural warming will once again combine with man-made warming to push temperature rise into overdrive. The surge that we saw through the 1980s and 1990s will resume with a vengeance. That could be the moment that climate change passes a point of no return, when ice sheets start to collapse and parched rainforests and soils dump their carbon into the air, accelerating warming.
Global warming “deniers”, being placed in the same bracket as holocaust deniers, would point to the facts, not the theories or fanciful computer models, to make their arguments. How long will it be before the next ice age is here I wonder?
Saturday, 7 June 2008
Nine meals from anarchy
The Daily Mail newspaper, on 7th June 2008, has an article about how close people in Britain are from a “food crisis”. It starts off with,
Long before many others, Cameron saw the potential of a real food crisis striking not just the poor of the Third World, but us, here in Britain, in the 21st Century.
The scenario goes like this. Imagine a sudden shutdown of oil supplies; a sudden collapse in the petrol that streams steadily through the pumps and so into the engines of the lorries which deliver our food around the country, stocking up the supermarket shelves as soon as any item runs out.
If the trucks stopped moving, we'd start to worry and we'd head out to the shops, stocking up our larders. By the end of Day One, if there was still no petrol, the shelves would be looking pretty thin. Imagine, then, Day Two: your fourth, fifth and sixth meal. We'd be in a panic. Day three: still no petrol.
What then? With hunger pangs kicking in, and no notion of how long it might take for the supermarkets to restock, how long before those who hadn't stocked up began stealing from their neighbours? Or looting what they could get their hands on?
It was Lord Cameron's estimation that it would take just nine meals – three full days without food on supermarket shelves - before law and order started to break down, and British streets descended into chaos.
It then goes on to show the signs that this may be going to happen in the near future. Below are some I’ve picked out.
Oil prices are spiralling
Food price inflation
Food production methods are now 95 per cent dependant on oil
Cost of transporting food
Carbon footprint of chemical fertilisers
Wheat prices have doubled
Pig farmers are going out of business
Disabled people and poorer pensioners have to go short of food
WalMart rationing rice
It also goes on to say,
And so as oil prices have risen, so too has the cost of food - and I'm afraid it's only set to get worse. The age of cheap food is at an end - and it will impact not only on our supermarket bills, but on the whole economy.
London imports more than 80 per cent and a food shortage would hit the capital the hardest.
The net result is a looming crisis of which soaring oil prices could simply be the starting gun.
Today, we stand on the brink of a longer-term problem. In the words of Tim Lang, Professor of Food Policy at City University, London: 'We are sleep-walking into a crisis.'
Suddenly, that warning of being 'nine meals from anarchy' no longer seems such a distant or improbable threat.
The article was by Rosie Boycott
Long before many others, Cameron saw the potential of a real food crisis striking not just the poor of the Third World, but us, here in Britain, in the 21st Century.
The scenario goes like this. Imagine a sudden shutdown of oil supplies; a sudden collapse in the petrol that streams steadily through the pumps and so into the engines of the lorries which deliver our food around the country, stocking up the supermarket shelves as soon as any item runs out.
If the trucks stopped moving, we'd start to worry and we'd head out to the shops, stocking up our larders. By the end of Day One, if there was still no petrol, the shelves would be looking pretty thin. Imagine, then, Day Two: your fourth, fifth and sixth meal. We'd be in a panic. Day three: still no petrol.
What then? With hunger pangs kicking in, and no notion of how long it might take for the supermarkets to restock, how long before those who hadn't stocked up began stealing from their neighbours? Or looting what they could get their hands on?
It was Lord Cameron's estimation that it would take just nine meals – three full days without food on supermarket shelves - before law and order started to break down, and British streets descended into chaos.
It then goes on to show the signs that this may be going to happen in the near future. Below are some I’ve picked out.
Oil prices are spiralling
Food price inflation
Food production methods are now 95 per cent dependant on oil
Cost of transporting food
Carbon footprint of chemical fertilisers
Wheat prices have doubled
Pig farmers are going out of business
Disabled people and poorer pensioners have to go short of food
WalMart rationing rice
It also goes on to say,
And so as oil prices have risen, so too has the cost of food - and I'm afraid it's only set to get worse. The age of cheap food is at an end - and it will impact not only on our supermarket bills, but on the whole economy.
London imports more than 80 per cent and a food shortage would hit the capital the hardest.
The net result is a looming crisis of which soaring oil prices could simply be the starting gun.
Today, we stand on the brink of a longer-term problem. In the words of Tim Lang, Professor of Food Policy at City University, London: 'We are sleep-walking into a crisis.'
Suddenly, that warning of being 'nine meals from anarchy' no longer seems such a distant or improbable threat.
The article was by Rosie Boycott
Thursday, 5 June 2008
Food shortages and civilisations
The Times newspaper, on June 3rd 2008, has an article about the affects food shortages has had on civilisations in the past. It says,
The State exists to feed people. Politicians proclaim defence or law and order or social issues or wealth creation or health as their priority. But without food, nothing else matters.
When food gives out, revolutions follow. Famine helped to precipitate the Ming dynasty to power in China. French revolutionaries asked Marie Antoinette for bread before they called for her head. One reason why the British gave up their Indian Raj was an awareness that they could not cope with famine. Food failure can bring down whole civilisations.
Today's failure to deliver food for the people is worldwide. In the West, it means higher grocery bills. In much of the rest of the world, it means hunger. In at least 30 countries, it means famine. The price of staple grains has risen by an average of 80 per cent over the past two years. Some prices have trebled.
The political convulsions have begun. The world's hunger victims are biting rubber bullets. In Haiti, the starvelings have rebelled. In West Africa, Egypt, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Madagascar they are rioting. In the West, governments' votes fall as grocery bills rise.
The article was written by Felipe Fernández-Armesto, author of “Food: A History”.
The State exists to feed people. Politicians proclaim defence or law and order or social issues or wealth creation or health as their priority. But without food, nothing else matters.
When food gives out, revolutions follow. Famine helped to precipitate the Ming dynasty to power in China. French revolutionaries asked Marie Antoinette for bread before they called for her head. One reason why the British gave up their Indian Raj was an awareness that they could not cope with famine. Food failure can bring down whole civilisations.
Today's failure to deliver food for the people is worldwide. In the West, it means higher grocery bills. In much of the rest of the world, it means hunger. In at least 30 countries, it means famine. The price of staple grains has risen by an average of 80 per cent over the past two years. Some prices have trebled.
The political convulsions have begun. The world's hunger victims are biting rubber bullets. In Haiti, the starvelings have rebelled. In West Africa, Egypt, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Madagascar they are rioting. In the West, governments' votes fall as grocery bills rise.
The article was written by Felipe Fernández-Armesto, author of “Food: A History”.
Monday, 2 June 2008
Nuclear bomb blueprints for sale
The Guardian newspaper, on May 31st 2008, reports about warnings of nuclear bomb blueprints for sale on the world black market. It says,
Nuclear bomb blueprints and manuals on how to manufacture weapons-grade uranium for warheads are feared to be circulating on the international black market, according to investigators tracking the world's most infamous nuclear smuggling racket.
Alarm about the sale of nuclear know-how follows the disclosure that the Swiss government, allegedly acting under US pressure, secretly destroyed tens of thousands of documents from a massive nuclear smuggling investigation.
"It's amazing these people had so much information, incredibly sensitive stuff on nuclear weaponisation and gas centrifuges," said David Albright, a Washington-based former UN weapons inspector. "I'm sure the US got a copy. But who else got the documents? Can you believe these two, the brothers [Marco Tinner is also in custody] were the only ones who got the stuff?"
President Couchepin said: "There were detailed construction plans for nuclear weapons, for gas ultracentrifuges to enrich weapons-grade uranium as well as for guided missile delivery systems."
You would need billions of dollars, highly trained experts and many years of work to create a nuclear bomb. I don’t think we have anything to fear even if al-Qaida had the documents, which they more than likely don’t.
Nuclear bomb blueprints and manuals on how to manufacture weapons-grade uranium for warheads are feared to be circulating on the international black market, according to investigators tracking the world's most infamous nuclear smuggling racket.
Alarm about the sale of nuclear know-how follows the disclosure that the Swiss government, allegedly acting under US pressure, secretly destroyed tens of thousands of documents from a massive nuclear smuggling investigation.
"It's amazing these people had so much information, incredibly sensitive stuff on nuclear weaponisation and gas centrifuges," said David Albright, a Washington-based former UN weapons inspector. "I'm sure the US got a copy. But who else got the documents? Can you believe these two, the brothers [Marco Tinner is also in custody] were the only ones who got the stuff?"
President Couchepin said: "There were detailed construction plans for nuclear weapons, for gas ultracentrifuges to enrich weapons-grade uranium as well as for guided missile delivery systems."
You would need billions of dollars, highly trained experts and many years of work to create a nuclear bomb. I don’t think we have anything to fear even if al-Qaida had the documents, which they more than likely don’t.
The end of the world is nigh
The Times newspaper, on 28th May 2008, has an article about a man named Gordon Ritchie, a member of the Jehovah's Witness splinter group The Lords' Witnesses, who claims he is the first horseman of the apocalypse. It says,
To be fair to Gordon, he doesn't go shouting about being the first horseman. It pops up only when we're discussing the Book of Revelation, the last chapter of the Bible so beloved of apocalyptic prophets. The second horseman of Revelation, says Gordon, is War and he is already up and running in the form of George W. Bush. The third horseman, Famine, is loose, too - in the body of the UN which is wrecking the world through its oil-for-food programme, and the fourth horsemen, Death, is in full tack and waiting at the stable door in the form of nuclear weapons.
It is his considered opinion that the world ended on March 21, 2008. Are you seeing the flaw in this yet? To be fair to him, he thinks March 21 was just the beginning of the end, Christ warming up for the Second Coming, so to speak, but he has a long track record of incorrectly prophesying all sorts of calamity.
“Admittedly, we have got it wrong before,” says Gordon. How many times? “Over 70 but just because we've been wrong in the past doesn't mean we will be wrong in the future. We've been right about some things. About one in ten of our prophecies are correct.”
If I remember my Sunday school teacher right, all false prophets were stoned to death, and didn’t Jesus saying something about no one knowing when he would return? Anyway, the article also includes some interest predictions from the past that didn’t quite come to pass.
March 25, 970: Logicians foresaw the End when Annunciation and Good Friday fell on the same day, believing that it was the day that Adam was created, Isaac was sacrificed, the Red Sea was parted, Jesus was conceived, and Jesus was crucified.February 1, 1524: London astrologers believed a flood would destroy the world; 20,000 people abandoned their homes.
October 1, 1914: The author and minister Charles T. Russell created the most hyped Armageddon date for Jehovah's Witnesses after an 1881 prediction didn't materialise, picking out quotations from the Book of Daniel and assigning them random numerical values to come up with this date.
Friday, February 13, 1925: Young Margaret Rowan predicted the End after having a dream of Angel Gabriel. A man then spent his life savings on advertising space for an eleventh-hour gathering. When nothing happened, he suggested that perhaps she meant Pacific time.
2006: A British cult filled caves in India with dry goods, believing the end was nigh.
The article was by Mark Barrowcliffe.
To be fair to Gordon, he doesn't go shouting about being the first horseman. It pops up only when we're discussing the Book of Revelation, the last chapter of the Bible so beloved of apocalyptic prophets. The second horseman of Revelation, says Gordon, is War and he is already up and running in the form of George W. Bush. The third horseman, Famine, is loose, too - in the body of the UN which is wrecking the world through its oil-for-food programme, and the fourth horsemen, Death, is in full tack and waiting at the stable door in the form of nuclear weapons.
It is his considered opinion that the world ended on March 21, 2008. Are you seeing the flaw in this yet? To be fair to him, he thinks March 21 was just the beginning of the end, Christ warming up for the Second Coming, so to speak, but he has a long track record of incorrectly prophesying all sorts of calamity.
“Admittedly, we have got it wrong before,” says Gordon. How many times? “Over 70 but just because we've been wrong in the past doesn't mean we will be wrong in the future. We've been right about some things. About one in ten of our prophecies are correct.”
If I remember my Sunday school teacher right, all false prophets were stoned to death, and didn’t Jesus saying something about no one knowing when he would return? Anyway, the article also includes some interest predictions from the past that didn’t quite come to pass.
March 25, 970: Logicians foresaw the End when Annunciation and Good Friday fell on the same day, believing that it was the day that Adam was created, Isaac was sacrificed, the Red Sea was parted, Jesus was conceived, and Jesus was crucified.February 1, 1524: London astrologers believed a flood would destroy the world; 20,000 people abandoned their homes.
October 1, 1914: The author and minister Charles T. Russell created the most hyped Armageddon date for Jehovah's Witnesses after an 1881 prediction didn't materialise, picking out quotations from the Book of Daniel and assigning them random numerical values to come up with this date.
Friday, February 13, 1925: Young Margaret Rowan predicted the End after having a dream of Angel Gabriel. A man then spent his life savings on advertising space for an eleventh-hour gathering. When nothing happened, he suggested that perhaps she meant Pacific time.
2006: A British cult filled caves in India with dry goods, believing the end was nigh.
The article was by Mark Barrowcliffe.
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