A YouTube video by Pleiadian spokesperson Colleen Thomas, in which we learn that US President Barack Obama is one of the lizard people, that the Reticulans are preparing to ‘ennhilate’ us with an electromagnetic pulse that will immobilize ‘all electronics on this planet all the way down to the central core’ and that the US will be attacked with ‘dirty bombs’ that will be ‘detonated and let loose’ on the 8th of November. ((I apologize if I got any of the details wrong – whenever I try and watch this video, my mind is clouded over by the Reticulans and Colleen’s words just sound like one long stream of incomprehensible gibberish.))
It doesn’t matter what kind of goofiness you can imagine in your wildest flights of fantasy – there is always some woo-monger who can out-goofy you.
Dear oh dear. Where to start? OK, you may know that the current attempts to explain the quirky mathematical conundrums that are thrown up by modern physics lead to all kinds of unusual and counter-intuitive conjectures of how our actual reality manifests itself. One of these hypotheses calls for a situation where every conceivable possible consequence of every possible event is quite literally executed in one of an infinite number of alternate universes. I want to emphasize that this is just a mathematical speculation and there is no actual reason to think it’s anything more than an abstract concept. One thing is for certain – our feeble human brains don’t cope very well with strange ideas like this.
The problem is, Faithful Acowlytes, that even feebler human brains than yours or mine think they can understand this kind of thing. Or, at least, they want to convince other feeble-minded people that they do. Not only that, they also claim that they can somehow communicate with these multiple universes and by doing so fix things up for themselves in our own universe.
This useful trick is achieved using the technique of Quantum Jumping, the discovery of ‘The American Monk’ – one Burt Goldman, an 82 year old man who seems to have no real credentials other than as a purveyor of other different, but equally silly, flavours of flim-flam. Visiting the Quantum Jumping website is a frustrating and mind-numbing experience. It takes you several links to find out that the website itself is never going to give you any real indication of how the technique is supposed to work – but you do (naturally) have numerous opportunities to divest yourself of money. For your edification, as near as I can make out, this is Quantum Jumping in a nutshell:
1: Scientists ‘have proved’ that there are multiple universes.
2: In those multiple universes there are copies of you that are more successful/attractive/wealthy/happy than you are in this universe.
3: Somehow ((There’s no real detail ANYWHERE about how this is achieved. You have to pay for the DVDs/books to get this information. Numerous commenters on Burt Goldman’s websites claim that you don’t even get it when you pay, which doesn’t surprise me.)) you can get in touch with these ‘better’ versions of you, and, for reasons that are exceptionally unclear, they will reveal to you the secrets of their wonderful lives.
Of course, the real sleight-of-hand here comes underneath the term ‘quantum’; quantum stuff is weird, and therefore all bets are off and anything is possible. Never mind that the ‘logic’ of this concept leads to all kinds of unhappy paradoxes (One of these is that if it’s possible to alter this reality for the better, then it’s also equally possible to alter this reality for the worse. For every reality where there is a helpful ‘other self’ there’s one that’s malign and has every intention of doing you harm. How are you EVER going to tell the difference, eh?)
Mr Goldman claims that after employing the technique of Quantum Jumping he was able to accomplish the following feats:
•Started fine art painting (‘My artwork hangs in a museum to prove it’)
•Achieved status as a photographer (I got my photographs shown in multiple galleries throughout the US, Europe and Asia)
•Became a writer (Claims several books including Goodbye April Moon)
•Started a Million Dollar Online Business
Here is an example of Mr Goldman’s painting:
One has to speculate that the museum that it hangs in is, perhaps, in another universe. A universe where talentless artists get their work hung in museums.
Elsewhere you can read an excerpt of Mr Goldman’s book Goodbye April Moon, which is of a similar calibre, except with words. It seems like an awful shame to me that given the infinite number of possible universes and unlimited iterations of doppelgänger Burt Goldmans, the Miracle of Quantum Jumping could only manage to put him in contact with versions of himself that have aspired to achievements of monumental mediocrity. ((Of course it is possible that Burt Goldman is revered as an absolute GENIUS in another universe… this multiple universe thing is so damn convenient!)) His last claim to have ‘started a million dollar online business’ is possibly valid – it’s the business that gets people to fork out money for stupid and completely unfeasible self-improvement schemes like Quantum Jumping.
And, as is too often the case, Burt Goldman has a convenient disclaimer if Quantum Jumping doesn’t deliver the promised results. This, in his own words in a reply on his site:
No proof is necessary! Brilliant! He’s selling you something that may or may not work, and, if it doesn’t, he doesn’t have to explain why it should. It just doesn’t! Man, I wish I had his chutzpah.
One thing that was striking about trawling through Burt Goldman’s various sites is that the experience is eerily familiar. The endless screeds of utter twaddle, interspersed with blocks of exhortations in capital letters and promises that lead to more promises and deliver nothing at all, reminds me vividly of none other than our old friend Prophet Peter Popoff. Burt Goldman is like Peter Popoff without the God factor. An ‘alternate universe’ Peter Popoff, you might say. Unfortunately BOTH of them are in this universe.
I’ll end this post with one of the many stories that Mr Goldman tells on his site, and with a video from him on how you can improve your life simply by ‘tapping’. Yes, that’s right, tapping. Tapping on things. Ping.
I meditated until I was satisfied I was in alpha and then jumped into a parallel and got an impression of my alternate self. He obviously knew what I was there for and handed me a [propeller] beanie hat. I looked at the hat and asked what is it for. “Healing,†my twin self said. “Put it on and spin the propeller when you want to heal someone.â€
The image of Mr Goldman wearing a propeller beanie seems somehow astonishingly apposite. Imagine him wearing it throughout the following clip for best effect.
Happy tapping Cowpokes! I’m off to find the universe where people properly understand the words ‘quantum’ and ‘fractal’, and where Burt Goldman, Peter Popoff and Melissa Rogers are nothing more than characters in a fictional daytime soap opera. It has to be out there somewhere.
Halloween is one of my favourite festivals as you all know. It is the time of the year when we celebrate the dark and drear, when our imaginations wander to the chilly side of existence and we contemplate those things that cannot come out to play in the light of day.
So it is deeply disturbing to me, to see the Halloween tradition becoming cuter and cuter as the years go by. Cute pumpkins, cheery ghosts, jolly vampires, happy Frankenstein’s monsters… what the hell is with all that? Halloween is supposed to SCARE you, people. It’s not about CUTE. If you want cute you can get it any time of the year. In fact, all you wimps who want a Festival of Cute, why don’t you go make one. Put it in February, as far away from Halloween as possible. Then you can all go and revel in your Anne Geddes photographs and Hello Kitty pinkitude together and leave the rest of us to enjoy a decent scare-fest.
OK. So I’m in the middle of the country in northern California and hungry. I venture out to a local pizza place (local being an approximate term – it’s about a fifteen minute drive). I order a small pizza and a starter of garlic bread.
‘Do you want the ‘Special’ garlic bread with cheese?’
I decline and just go for the standard. It arrives in a few minutes. It is covered in melted cheese. I beckon the waiter over.
‘Excuse me, I ordered the garlic bread without cheese,’ I say, indicating the basket of cheesy comestibles.
‘Oh, that’s the way it comes’, he says. ‘That’s just parmesan. The ‘With Cheese’ option is with melted mozarella.’
OK, so I was prepared to get off the soapbox with this, but the Fairfax newspapers’ seriously relentless stance on this is just too galling. The above image ran in the Sydney Morning Herald today as the masthead for this article.
The front page used another more evocative phrase:
You read the story and judge whether it’s about Apple, or about something else entirely. In my opinion, it fairly reeks of ulterior motive. Stilgherrian, Currawong, call me overly sensitive if you will, but tell me this is all about sales-worthy copy! There is serious malice here. You don’t keep on running these kinds of stories unless you have an agenda. Apple is a cult because they make something that people like? How is that? A statement like ‘Apple is not my friend: Why you shouldn’t trust a ‘cult” is so coloured with judgemental negative pronouncement that it is barely two quotation marks away from slander. It is plainly nothing more than mud-slinging.
I apologize for running another of these posts dear Acowlytes, but I’m filing evidence here. I will state it in no uncertain terms – the Fairfax media is willfully laying the boot into Apple.
