Owww, ul Aaron..Worst way to go

Come on Aaron!!  Bring it back to Northampton

Buenos dias everyone.  I might give this one a go.  Been away from online poker for aaages!

How many more times do I have to say just forget Nostradamus, because no matter what happens it can never be proved, true or not.  I've been talking about all sorts of theories, some scientific some not.  Stop getting hung up on the one that is the most difficult to believe, especially once I have said yes, ok, they might not be at all reliable.  I didn't realise until a few days ago how close minded poker players are.

[might]

Many people love fatalistic premonitions.  Life (and the existence of the universe) is beyond their understanding that there must be something mystical and supernatural causing events, because it is beyond their personal incredulity that everything in the universe has just 'happened' - it must have a designer and an ultimate goal.  Without this goal, they feel as though they are worthless and insignificant.  It is actually very egocentric view to think that life, the earth and the universe is here for humankind's benefit.  We're not that important - we're just clever apes with technology.  Nothing more, nothing less.

In fact I think quite the opposite.  I believe in science and I'm not actually suggesting anything "supernatural" here.  Ok, although I find the Nostradamus prophecies very interesting, I've said before that I don't think we should all blindly believe in them.  But having said that, in the same way that I won't believe in a God until it's proved to me, I'm not going to rule out Nostradamus and prophecies as impossible.  We only use something like 10% of our brain so who's to say what's possible when we use more.  

For all the people who keep going on about the literal end of the world and the world is 45 billion years old or whatever, that's not what I'm talking about.  I've been throwing a lot of ideas around but they don't all mean the literally "the world is going to cease to exist".  They just mean the world might change a lot.

I believe that everything in the universe just "happened" and we are only a very small part of it.  What I am suggesting is about as far from egocentric as you can get.  I'm saying that because humans are a relatively new thing in the history of the universe that maybe we don't actually know everything there is to know about our world or indeed the universe.  I mean going back a few hundred thousand years and our continents aren't even where they are today.  Although it seems enough people on here think me to be a lunatic already, I also believe in life elsewhere in the universe.  That's not to say I believe in alien abuctions and ufo sightings and government cover ups etc.  I just think it's incredibly unlikely that of all the endless planets in the universe, Earth is the only one to have produced life.  It's just arrogance to think we are the only ones.  That is pretty much the only solid belief I have with regards to us, the universe, and everything.   I feel like I must say again for the 100th time that I DO NOT outright believe any of the things I've suggested on this thread.  I thought I had made it clear that I'm just discussing possibilities, and wanting people's opinions which is what I've got, but I haven't suddenly turned into some kind of crazed lunatic.  Throughout history the unlikely has become reality.  Not all of it, but some of it.  I like talking and thinking about possibilities and what the future might hold for us all.  Sorry that you guys don't.

Nostradamus may have been wrong about the future but at least he actually thought about it.

All of this fails to tell me why my toast always land butter side down.

I expect it's because Nostadamus predicted it. In code, of course.

Forget Nostradamus.  I realise that whatever happens, even if WWIII were to break lose, people won't believe he predicted it.  It can't be proved so it'll just become another retrospective possibility.  If I wanted to argue the cult's case there would be better evidence than that.

[The Mayans (who were wrong about a lot of things, but even more accurate about calendars than we are) have ended their calendar on 21st Dec 2012.]

...
-  The Mayans (who were wrong about a lot of things, but even more accurate about calendars than we are) have ended their calendar on 21st Dec 2012.  Why?  We don't know, but a lot of other cycles in their calendars are like ours, related to the goings on in the heavens.  Some think the end of the long count is merely counting down to the galactic alignment, but then what is the significance of counting in 5000 year cycles?
...

All calendars are man made, every number in all of them is an artificial construct.

A 5000 year cycle is no more significant than a 1000 year cycle or a 100 year cycle.

What they all do have in common is that groups have linked significant events to all of them, all the time, throughout history - purely based on the fact that they're particularly large and round numbers.

Yes...but:

A day = a cycle of the Earth's rotation.
A month (roughly) = A cycle of the moon around the Earth.
A year = a cycle of the Earth's rotation around the Sun.

Ok, we get the numbers to fit and add in some units to make time keeping easier, but it's all based on astrological events.  In fact the only units we make up are small ones.  So a 5000 year cycle probably has some significance.

Wikipedia has a good article about time under the definition for second which shows how artificial time is - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second

But roughly speaking our way of measuring time has always been essentially based on trying to find something in nature which is so uniform, predictable and measurable that we can use it as a base unit.

So when you say that -  "A year = a cycle of the Earth's rotation around the Sun." - that is precisely the right way round, the earth going around the sun has absolutely no significance in any way other than what we assign to it. Our definition of time has arisen out of various historical imperatives, but if things had gone differently we would be using other measurements instead - and every 100, 1000 or 5000 of them would have groups of people believing that they were significant.

Ok I know a bit about physics so I'm hoping I'm right when I say that then surely the same could be said about mass.  The mass of an object can only be defined by comparison as well.  Apparently "The kilogram is the unit of mass; it is equal to the mass of the international prototype of the kilogram".  In fact every single measurement we use is only a comparison to a standardised unit, something "fake".  Therefore time is a real as mass is.  We relate time to what goes on in space,  but what happens in space also effects what happens on this planet, and I'm not talking about horoscopes, I'm talking about the tides, and the seasons, and day and night.

The Mayan's themselves actually used two day-to-day calendars similar to our annual one.  The first was a 260 day cycle, and the other was a slightly less used 365 day calendar as a way of keeping track of the seasons.  Dates from both of these calendars are used when writing a long count date.

Surely if calendars are just made up we would all be living on metric time by now.


BTW, I'm not saying the number 5000 is significant. I'm saying that the Mayans might have used 5000 years as a way of counting down to an astrological event of some kind, or at least the completion of some kind of astrological cycle they were counting, along the same lines as the Earth's movement around the Sun.

Afraid you might have to elaborate due to my mind being inferior.  The way I see it, a year is an (almost) accurate measurement of how long it takes the Earth to go around the Sun.  How is is that a made up number?  An hour is a made up number, as is a week, but not a day or a year.

[The Mayans (who were wrong about a lot of things, but even more accurate about calendars than we are) have ended their calendar on 21st Dec 2012.]

...
-  The Mayans (who were wrong about a lot of things, but even more accurate about calendars than we are) have ended their calendar on 21st Dec 2012.  Why?  We don't know, but a lot of other cycles in their calendars are like ours, related to the goings on in the heavens.  Some think the end of the long count is merely counting down to the galactic alignment, but then what is the significance of counting in 5000 year cycles?
...

All calendars are man made, every number in all of them is an artificial construct.

A 5000 year cycle is no more significant than a 1000 year cycle or a 100 year cycle.

What they all do have in common is that groups have linked significant events to all of them, all the time, throughout history - purely based on the fact that they're particularly large and round numbers.

Yes...but:

A day = a cycle of the Earth's rotation.
A month (roughly) = A cycle of the moon around the Earth.
A year = a cycle of the Earth's rotation around the Sun.

Ok, we get the numbers to fit and add in some units to make time keeping easier, but it's all based on astrological events.  In fact the only units we make up are small ones.  So a 5000 year cycle probably has some significance.

Lots and often. 

[On 21st December 2012 there will be an alignment of the Sun, the Earth, and the centre of our galaxy which only happens once every 25,000 years.]

Boldie, I am happy to admit that yes, the interpretations of his quatrains are often altered and twisted to fit to historical events. And from what you've said about the Diana prediction I posted, yes you are right.  I've actually put quite a few of the quatrains through a translator (admittedly not that one...whoops), mainly the ones supposedly to do with our future,  because I knew a lot of them would be twisted to fit, and some of them have been and some haven't.  But the trouble is that all of the prophecies were left undated which means that people are going to have to guess as to when these things happened/are going to happen, and very often they are wrong, but that does not mean that they will never be right.  Yes, the world was supposed to end countless times already, like at turn of the millenium, but that one at least was only down a quatrain which states "near the turn of the great millenium", which in theory could refer to any time from 1980-2020 (or even a bigger margin if we think of the time scales.  Nostradamus was alive half a millenium ago)

The most recently discovered work of Nostradamus is dubed "The Lost Book" and contains many images and drawings which can be related to the galactic alignment that is going to take place on 21st Dec 2012, and obviously possible the end of the world.  Whether these drawings are yet another vague thing that can be attributed to anything the reader sees fit - I don't know enough about it to make any kind of informed judgement on that yet.

Contrary to how it may seem, I am not one of these people who will believe everything they're told.  I'm not even religious because I can't bring myself to blindly follow the path of someone who may or may not exist.  But I will keep an open mind.  Go back to ancient times and everyone thought the world was flat, and when it was suggested otherwise everyone cried out with laughter at this "ridiculous" theory.  Why?  Because it was something that to begin with their minds just couldn't comprehend.  Personally I think it is very small-minded to assume that current science is all there is and to dismiss things that don't seem possible as ridiculous.  Not so long ago we didn't even know that particles were made up of atoms so just imagine what we might discover in the future. 

I suppose the pessimist in me does actually think that WWIII is a very real possibility, mainly because of the ongoing tension between the East and the West, and partly because I think that humans as a race can be very stupid and we won't actually learn our lesson with regards to nuclear weapons etc until we blow the world to smitherines and realise what a massive mistake it was.  After that we might actually find the global peace and harmony a lot of the world has wanted for so long.  Whether it happens in 2012 though...only time will tell.

Nostradamus and his vague undated prophecies aside, there are still a number of hard facts which are just that, facts.

-  On 21st December 2012 there will be an alignment of the Sun, the Earth, and the centre of our galaxy which only happens once every 25,000 years.  No one has been around long enough to see what, if anything happens when this event occurs.

-  The Mayans (who were wrong about a lot of things, but even more accurate about calendars than we are) have ended their calendar on 21st Dec 2012.  Why?  We don't know, but a lot of other cycles in their calendars are like ours, related to the goings on in the heavens.  Some think the end of the long count is merely counting down to the galactic alignment, but then what is the significance of counting in 5000 year cycles?

- According to many scientists and even Einstein himself, the Earth is well overdue a global pole shift.  In fact, scientists have even proven that it has happened before!  Some even suggest that this is how Atlantis came to be lost.  Could it be related to the alignment of the galaxy?

Anyway, I'm not saying I believe the end of the world is coming, because I don't.  To quote a great film "No fate but what we make."  I just think we should keep an open mind about our future.  And I just think it's interesting...wouldn't it be cool if someone could predict the future?

So what were your best and worse presents this year??

Nostradamus also said that a man named MADAS would end the world. That's 'Sadam' backwards.

We know what happened there.

gg

I think the name he refers to is MABUS which some have taken to mean Sadam.  Some also think it could mean George Bush, Barack Obama, Osama Bin Laden, or a leader from the East not yet known to us.  

Yes, because all those names sound a lot like MABUS. It makes perfect sense really....in fact it's quite scary how similar it is.

I shall call Nostradamus "Frank" from now on...it's close enough and I'm sure he wouldn't mind...in fact, I shall call everybody quoting him Frank from now on, I'm bound to be right sooner or later.

It's surprising how many names he gets right actually.  This is a prediction about the death of Princess Diana:  

The last son of the man with the Prophet’s name (Mohammed)
Will bring Diana to her day of rest.
At a distance they wander in frenetic grief
Delivering a great people from ruin.’

And this one about Napoleon where he uses an anagram:

PAU, NAY, LORON will be more of fire than of the blood,
To swim in praise,
the great one to flee to the confluence.
He will refuse entry to the Piuses,
The depraved ones and the Durance will keep them imprisoned.

PAU NAY LORON spells Napaulon Roy, or Napoleon the King giving the Corsican spelling of his name.  Anyway, I'm still not saying I believe it all.  You are right in a that the Nostradamus prophecies can be very vague, but I find it hard to ignore indisputable fact, like the end of the Mayan calendar, or the alignment of the galaxy on the exact same day, but then again maybe that's all that will happen.

sigh, time to start xmas shopping but cba

There's hours left yet - no rush.

this, you'll save yourself tonnes of money if you go after 3 or 4 o'clock today as all the shops will be putting prices down already.

Lol @ the shit blokes on this forum