Out of boredom I started watching Human Weapon and Fight Quest  a while back.Both are serial semi-documentaries that explore various martial arts around the world. They are very similar (but Human Weapon aired first) - the only differences I could see were that HW had cool motion-captured animations explaining the forces behind the main techniques of each art, while FQ’s hosts were more critical of the martial arts they went up against.

There were real whoppers in Human Weapon’s coverage of Malaysian silat though - to believe their version of silat’s history, 20% of Malaysians practice silat and “thousands of silat warriors” died to achieve our independence in 1957! I’ve a clip that shows what they said at the beginning:

Popularity: 54% [?]

I’d actually heard of gold dust and teeth making an appearance way way back but I didn’t know it was making a return to Charismatic circles until I heard a sermon about it on Sunday. A lady went up after and said gold dust had appeared on her during the sermon.

My first thought was “why gold fillings or gold teeth?” Heaven is supposed to be paved with gold - now why would God fill your tooth with pavement? Why not just restore the tooth? Aren’t gold teeth status symbols of the rich? Strange that what is termed a “spritual revolution”; faith in the unseen, makes great weight of teeth bring turned into gold or gemstones appearing from nowhere. From several accounts, the people had specifically prayed for teeth fillings to be turned into gold - why pray for something of zero practical value, and something that could have been easily put in by a dentist?:

Skeptics can also point to Dick Dewert, president of CJIL-TV in Lethbridge, Alberta. Dewert claimed during a fundraising campaign that God had given him a gold tooth. But he retracted his claim March 25 after his dentist, Jack Sherman, reminded him that he had given him the filling 10 years before.

“The media tend to hit on the ones that are questionable, unfortunately. But this is why we want to move carefully, and to seek medical verification,” says Rev. Dr. John Roddam of St. David’s Anglican Church in Tsawwassen.

There was also the usual scoffing at skeptics who would rather question than believe this phenomenon; I wonder what the reaction is then for the “miracles” seen on the other side of the demoninational divide, e.g. visions of Fatima , or statues weeping tears of blood, or Hindu statues lapping up milk (I spotted posts on Catholic forums mocking this as “theology for gangsta rappers”).

Reactions from Christians themselves range from the amazed to the cautious, and the outright disbelieving. An observation I found stood out in my mind, and pretty much summed up my last thought on the matter as well:

Questions are raised in our minds about God’s goodness and open-handedness when, on the one hand, he seems unwilling or unable to prevent Auschwitz or the contemporary tragedy of Kosovo, but seems both willing and able to adopt the role of a modern dentist and provide not only cosmetic wonders, but phenomena more in keeping with the Fortean Times than the Bible.

Popularity: 57% [?]

Before the Flood, there was a canopy over the Earth. This canopy protected the Earth from harmful UV rays. This canopy protected the Earth from harmful UV rays. During the Flood, the canopy fell onto Earth as water, meaning that after the Flood there was no longer a protective canopy.

As a result of this, life on earth is exposed to UV rays and the harmful effects of radiation. That is why we have genetic diseases today, e.g. Down Syndrome and homosexuality, as opposed to before the Flood when man could live for nearly a thousand years.

One of my earliest articles was the Just World effect, also known as victim blaming, where man reasons that misfortune occurs because one deserves it - or inversely, that if something good happens to you, you must be a good person.

The quote above illustrates the other side of the spectrum and it’s not exaggerated - it was recited to me with a straight face. It sounds like Calvinism’s total depravity, only more depressing and more irrational. Taking the Flood literally is already pretty shaky, what more trying to whip up science from a time when people didn’t know what the water cycle was! The same person declared there would have been no sicknesses or deaths if not for the Fall - I asked what would happen if a flu virus invaded the body, and from the response I got, I gathered virii and bacteria must be the products of Sin too.

I really felt like I was in the twilight zone for a moment. It has to be pretty depressing thinking you’re living in such a damned world.

Popularity: 64% [?]

Remember the Bible Code? The theory was that every important person/event in the world is encoded in the Torah (the first five books of the Bible), and can be found by dividing the Hebrew script into columns and searching for phrases in them (so that’s what God was doing on the seventh day!). It was just one of a long line of pseudoreligious theories, e.g.:

• The symbol of the Illuminati is “hidden” in the US dollar bill, a symbol of their conspiracy to take over the world;
• All bar codes actually contain the numbers “666″;
• A “lost day“, corresponding to the miracles requested by Joshua and Hezekiah, found and proven by befuddled scientists;
• Siberian scientists accidentally drilling a well to Hell;
• Various predictions of the world ending at various dates;
• Hidden pentagram and 666 formations in Washington ([pentagram = freemason = demonic] + 666 = very demonic);
• Procter and Gamble being run by Satanists;
• Dungeons and Dragons promotes Satanism and/or will possess you demonically (or Magic: the Gathering, or any game that involves any of the following: magic, spells, rituals, dragons, demons, Persia, witches [who are the bad guys supposed to be anyway?]);
• Harry Potter promotes witchcraft and has resulted in a rise in Satanism among children better burn all those Enid Blyton books too);
• Nearly everything written by Jack Chick. Seriously, that guy is one intolerant, paranoid psycho.

Ok, getting a little carried away there. The point here is that a healthy amount of skepticism has never hurt anyone. And I’ll be the first to admit that when I was younger I believed some of them.

One such hoax that seems to be making its rounds here lately is the “revelation” that various Chinese characters are inspired by Genesis (”Revelation” is relative here; the book that first expounded this, The Discovery of Genesis, was written in 1979. It’s like how we get seasons of Lost late).

It works a lot like the Bible Code, just in reverse. Instead of cherry-picking the Bible for letters and words which match up, you cherry-pick Chinese characters for elements which match Genesis. You can view examples here:

• The Genesis Site
• World Bible School. (Flash needed for this one)
• Answering Genesis.org

As for the rebuttals:

• A point-by-point rebuttal to the Genesis Site version;
• An indignant reaction to the WBS version from pinyin.info;
• A rather hilarious extrapolation.

I rather like pinyin.info’s comparison:

They’re all the equivalent of the folk etymology of the English word assume: “to assume means ‘to make an ass out of you and me.’”

Read rest of post…

Popularity: 21% [?]

Greetings. I am a time traveler from the year 2036. I am on my way home after getting an IBM 5100 computer system from the year 1975.

My “time” machine is a stationary mass, temporal displacement unit manufactured by General Electric. The unit is powered by two, top-spin, dual-positive singularities that produce a standard, off-set Tipler sinusoid.

Sounds like the start of a science fiction novel or movie, doesn’t it? It’s not. The above is a post made on an Internet message board by “John Titor” on January 27, 2001. Over the next few months he talked online with skeptics and believers before stating that he was returning to his own time on March 24, 2001. He was never heard from again.

People claiming to be time-travellers are not unheard of, especially with the anonymity of the Internet. What made John stand out was his ability to describe the theories and physics behind time-travel that fit into existing concepts of spacetime, and black holes. He even posted pictures of his device, and technical manuals accompanying it.

He stated that time paradoxes like the grandfather paradox did not exist, but that the Everett-Wheeler model (Many-Worlds Interpretation) - of a multiverse in which all possible actions are carried out - is correct.

Most people were of course very skeptical about Titor’s claims. He in turn would often state he was not concerned whether people would believe him, and rather assumed people wouldn’t - “What would it take for you to believe in a time traveller?” Skepticism, he said, was what made discussions interesting, rather than people accepting every word he said. He stated his purpose was to gauge the reaction of people to him. Some critics observed he would often parry the most direct questions posed to him, and reflect them on the questioner. But to his credit he did answer many questions about time and time travel, and the future.

Titor made a number of predictions about the future. Some, set in the near future, appeared on surface to bolster his claims as they came to pass. He mentioned that CJD (mad cow disease) would become more widespread but be played down, that Iraq would be accused of possessing nukes, and that the US government would begin to sacrifice civil rights for security (bear in mind his posts predated 9/11). He also knew obscure details, like certain UNIX systems having a year 2038 bug, and the IBM 5100 having hidden functions. He even hinted that the anticipated y2k bug problems did not come to pass because of future invervention.

He often described the philosophies and cultures of his time:

The war had very profound affects on people and how they relate to each other. As individuals, almost everyone in 2036 is very familiar with death. We all have stories of loved ones that have died from disease, war or acts of inhumanity. Most of us have even taken part in dishing the same thing out to the other side. As a result, we have become far more compassionate to the ones we love but mush less forgiving to those who don’t pull their weight. We are more accepting of other’s differences in our community because we depend on them to survive. We are also more conservative with our resources and closer to God because for a period, life on Earth was Hell.

The other major difference is in the concept of good and evil. With multiple worlds come multiple decisions and outcomes. For every good act, there is an equal and possible bad act on another worldline. Taken to the extreme, this must mean that in God’s eyes, there is no total good and total bad in the superverse. It balances itself out to infinity. I believe we are judged on the decisions we make as individuals and the good/evil I see on my worldline is an illusion that has no worth to God. My reaction to it is what’s important to God. Although this may seem rather heartless, it does allow me to see past the evil that people do and acknowledge the core of potential goodness inside them.

He also made apocalyptic statements about the future: Civil war in the US starting 2004-2005, and a third World War in 2015 which would see the US barraged by nukes. At the same time he stated that because worldines diverged (he estimated a divergence of 2% between our world and his), nothing was set in stone and we still could avoid the bleak future he knew. Skeptics observed that this made most of his claims impossible to verify, others said he was bringing a message of hope.

Was John Titor a hoax? Probably. His depiction of the future suspiciously mirrored popular science fiction themes, 2005 has passed with no signs of an American civil war, and his explanations of how his time machine worked was mercilessly shot down by science experts. But his story still entertains, and sparks thought about the direction that the human race is taking, sort of like what War of the Worlds did on radio in 1938. Time-traveller or storyteller, the tale of John Titor remains a memorable Internet legend.

Popularity: 39% [?]