Category: News and Events

Underbelly Maylands

Murders in Maylands

The trains were running late this morning and the one I was on was halted for quite some time at Maylands station while a pair of cops searched it up and down.

Turns out there’s been a double murder just near the station and the whole area is completely locked down. The cops were looking to see if the alleged killer was trying to escape via the rails.

Scary stuff! Not to mention the that I was late for work!

(What’s the odds that there’s Bikie involvement?)

London Burning, Leicester Pretty Much OK

I am of course keeping an eye on the situation in the UK. It’s pretty awful, but so far things seem to have been relatively calm (although ringed with incidents) in Edmonton where my uncle is and in Leicester, where the worst seems to have been a bunch of hoodied idiots running around smashing windows in the city centre until the police scattered them.

Hopefully this will blow over once the worst troublemakers are apprehended and the rest of the tag-along idiots sober up. It won’t address the complicated social issues that are the root cause, but at least it should restore order for the time being.

To everyone in the UK – not just my family and friends – the world’s thoughts are with you.

Why I Laugh?

I have no truck with the Gregorian Calendar!

I was wondering this morning where my Census form is, and speculating on whether the Government believes that I actually exist.

My coworkers pointed out that the Census is on August 9th.

I maintained my stance of puzzlement over where my Census form is, and wondered how I was to fill it out tonight if they didn’t sent me one.

My coworkers pointed out that today is August 2nd.

Oh, how we laughed!

Time to buy a lottery ticket!

Wish that dream about Kelly Clarkson would come true…

Dreamt that I was caught in an earthquake last night. Woke up to discover there’d been one in Melbourne.

I’ve obviously become psychic!

(Now if only that dream about Kelly Clarkson would come true…)

U’m Raptured uz Bro!

Go Tell it to the Whales

Last week there was a bit of a stir in the local media over a whale caught in fishing lines off Rottnest island. A rescue attempt was launched, but had to be abandoned due to oncoming storms. They did however manage to get a GPS tag attached to the lines so they could go back and free the whale later.

They finally got around to it yesterday (or was it the day before? I forget…). They got the rescue team together and headed out in boats to track  down the tag. They found it alright, still attached to the tangle of lines, but there was no whale!

The media are all saying that the whale managed to free itself. But, what if that’s not the case? What if the whale was raptured!?

C’mon, you (and Harold Camping) know that it makes sense! ;D

And on the subject of good ol’ Harold, he’s announced that the rapture that didn’t happen on Saturday did happen, it’s just that it was a mystical/spiritual thing rather than a physical thing, and the world is still going to end in October. Yeah, you just keep on truckin’ Harold!

Cognitive Dissonance, World Without End

Maybe it happened, but we just didn’t notice?

So, May 21st has come and gone and the world didn’t end. Presumably all those people who believed Harold Camping’s numerological interpretations of the Bible will now realise he’s a nut, switch off Family Radio and go and do something useful with their lives. Right?

Wrong. Why? Because of a little thing called Cognitive Dissonance.

Cognitive Dissonance is what happens when a person absolutely, positively believes something, and then reality doesn’t live up to those expectations. Confronted with evidence completely blowing their beliefs apart most people simply won’t be able to discard their beliefs. This is both because of the way neural pathways work in the brain, and the sheer amount of investment a true believer puts into their creed. What kind of investment? I’m glad you asked.

Keeping with the example of Harold Camping, some of his followers will have blown everything they have on his prophecy. They will have shed their physical assets – selling their homes and businesses and emptying their bank accounts to fund his message and spread the word, aiming to “save” as many people as possible. They will have also burned up all their social capital, proclaiming to their families, their friends, their neighbours, their workmates, colleagues and random people on the street that they’re right, and anyone who disagrees will be literally damned for their foolishness. Many will have severely damaged – if not totally destroyed – important relationships with their parents, children, friends and families. They’ve thrown everything they have into the belief system, and to turn around and admit that they were wrong, and it was all for nothing is just far, far too difficult and far too painful for most human minds to come to terms with.

So, what will happen?

They’ll come up with an excuse. A compromise. Their brains will turn the facts over and over again until they figure out a modification to their belief system that prevents their sacrifices and investment from being in vain, while still admitting that the end of the world didn’t happen. The classic excuse for failed end-of-the-world predictions is that God (or whoever/whatever) was so impressed by the believers’ actions that he decided to spare the world for a bit longer and called off the destruction. We’ll have to wait and see what will eventuate in this case, but it’s a fairly good stab at whatever the dominant excuse will be.

So, Harold Camping will keep on crunching his numbers, and Family Radio will keep spreading it’s messages to a slightly smaller, but still substantial flock. The same as human belief has ever been, and ever shall be, world without end.

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