Missed It By That Much . . .

Ah, my old friend Nostradamus is on television - again. The man who, according to those who believe in that sort of thing, in the 16th Century predicted every historical event of any significance that would occur between the time he lived and the "end of the world."

Excuse me while I choke back some choice words . . . Okay, we're better now.

Look, folks, it's not a "prediction" if you have to go back after the event and say "Aha! That's what he was talking about!" By its very nature, a prediction should be absolutely clear and unambiguous before the event in question happens. Otherwise, it's you reading into things.

Which is what Nostradamus, and every other "psychic" that has been or is, specializes in. Not that that stops the true believers, of course. After all, anything can be true if you wish it hard enough, right?

Let's stick with old Nosty, shall we? It never ceases to amaze me the lengths to which those who believe in his "predictions" will go in order to "prove" their assertions.

One of my favourite twists of logic involves the Quatrains that supposedly predict Hitler and the Second World War. The "proof" that our friend Nosty was talking about Adolf is the line: "And the greater part shall stand against Hister."

There you go. L, S, so what if he was off by one letter? Obviously, he was taking about Hitler . . . I mean, H-i-oops-t-e-r. What could be clearer? The explanation most often advanced for substituting an 's' for the 'l' is that Nostradamus was using a sort of code, because he lived in a time when it was dangerous to speak ill of those in power.

Whoops. Couple of problems with that. First of all, in the 16th Century, there was no Germany; there were a lot of states and principalities that, in the 19th Century, would become Germany (under the domination of Prussia), but there was no single German State and thus no German government or ruler to tick off (and, let's face it, Nostradamus lived in France, anyway). Second, and more importantly, "Hister" is an ancient name for the Danube River. Nostradamus may indeed have been talking about a war, but chances are he was talking about Europe confronting the Ottoman Turks; Vienna, after all, wasn't all that long before he lived.

Then there is the plain obfuscation of language. Believers in Nostradamus claim that he used descriptive, poetic language to talk about things that he had no words for. Case in point: when he writes about firearms. Believers insist that he never uses words like firearms, muskets or rifles because he didn't know what they were.

Whoops again. Nostradamus lived in the latter part of the 16th Century. He most certainly knew what a musket was, or at least its immediate forerunner, the arquebus, because both of those weapons were in use at the time. Why, then, if he was talking about a musket would he not say "musket"?

Then there is my favourite, which was all over the internet following 9/11. You know what I'm talking about, the Quatrain that supposedly predicted that event. Okay, you know what's coming next . . . Yep. Whoops. Turns out that that particular Quatrain was a fake. R'uh r'oh.

Which is a long way to go to get to this point: where are all these "psychics" before an event happens? If someone knows that something is going to happen prior to the event, especially if it is something like 9/11, I really can't imagine a more textbook definition of evil than to keep that information to themselves. At the very least, one would think that someone with that knowledge would have a moral duty to speak out about it before a whole bunch of people get killed.

Or perhaps not. I mean, there are still psychics around who are predicting that the Beatles will get back together. Which would be a neat trick, considering that John and George are dead . . .