Well Ken ‘Moon Man’ Ring got that one right didn’t he? What a cork soaker.
Sad isn’t it, that one aging hippy with a theory about the moon and tides has almost had as much press as the earthquake he reckons he predicted. Even sadder that the media in this country tried milking it for everything they could get, just in case. The cork soakers.
Good ol Ken - let’s call him Ringpiece for short - predicted that another major earthquake would happen in Christchurch on the 20th of March, just before lunch time. Ringpiece, it should be noted, claimed to have predicted the big one too. After it had happened.
Then he changed that prediction to be a couple of days either side of the 20th. Finally he decided it wasn’t going to be an earthquake at all, but rather a spot of bad weather. Naturally a lot of folk down that way, upon hearing this prediction, freaked. And who would blame them given that their life these days is one big aftershock occasionally interrupted by normality?
So why the change in prediction this time? Did the pressure of expectation get to him? Did the moon and tides suddenly change? Maybe the tsunami generated by Japans earthquake threw the charts of course. Whatever the excuse something must have happened because it’s quite the downgrade isn’t it, from a major shifting of the Earth’s tectonic plates to a spot of precipitation in the air?
It was foggy in Christchurch today actually. Cue the spooky music.
Maybe it’s because just like physics and tarot card readers he’s full of shit? Ringpiece reminds me a lot of a conspiracy theorist and I farken hate them. And just like a theorist it strikes me that someone like Ringpiece doesn’t actually need to prove anything.
Oh sure, science hasn’t yet proven any correlation between the cycle of the moon and the frequencies of earthquakes but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a connection. Likewise no one has actually proven that Tower 11 was an inside job on 9 / 11 but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t and nobody can really say for sure if MI5 killed Princess Diana because again, no one has proved they didn’t.
Only they have, for all three of the above scenarios, but guys like Ringpiece thrive on that little bit of doubt that exists when the full story can’t ever be laid out from start to finish like it is in the movies. They work on coincidence and happenstance and so long as there is fear of the unknown they get the publicity they long for in order to promote their myth conceptions.
And Ringpiece has had loads of publicity. My favorite was when he appeared on Harae Mae John Campbell’s show and got ripped to shreds by a host who was given the dirty nappy of all interviews by his producers and was clearly pissed about it. He got a lot of stick about it too did John but I for one thought he did a fine job tearing strips off a fear monger.
In Ringpiece’s case it’s a win win situation; predicting weather and shit is flaky at best and no one ever expects meteorologists and alike to get it right all of the time. So he predicts a lunar event that if it doesn’t come off means nothing, no sweat off anybody’s sack, but if he gets it right he becomes the authority on everything. Or in his own words:
"My business is only a bunch of opinions, as I have wearily repeated. There is no claim on accuracy; proof or anything other than that I have opinions."
"I don't claim to predict the weather. No-one can. We are not gods. Nobody has all the answers. In my books, it states on paragraph one on page one that what I say is opinion."
Nice bit of bullet dodging that, claiming his is an opinion. The book is $48 by the way and can be found on the shelf labeled ‘B for Bullshit’ at your nearest bookseller. Right next to Kelvin Quickwanks literary efforts.
Christchurch did have a sizeable aftershock last night, 5.1 to be exact. The believers will of course say The Moon Man got it right but that ignores the fact that before he changed his prediction three times, he reckoned it would be a magnitude 7+. In his own opinion, of course.
Perhaps he’ll claim next that tomorrow is going to be Tuesday too, in a remarkable piece of foresight he could have only extracted from his ring piece.
Sad isn’t it, that one aging hippy with a theory about the moon and tides has almost had as much press as the earthquake he reckons he predicted. Even sadder that the media in this country tried milking it for everything they could get, just in case. The cork soakers.
Good ol Ken - let’s call him Ringpiece for short - predicted that another major earthquake would happen in Christchurch on the 20th of March, just before lunch time. Ringpiece, it should be noted, claimed to have predicted the big one too. After it had happened.
Then he changed that prediction to be a couple of days either side of the 20th. Finally he decided it wasn’t going to be an earthquake at all, but rather a spot of bad weather. Naturally a lot of folk down that way, upon hearing this prediction, freaked. And who would blame them given that their life these days is one big aftershock occasionally interrupted by normality?
So why the change in prediction this time? Did the pressure of expectation get to him? Did the moon and tides suddenly change? Maybe the tsunami generated by Japans earthquake threw the charts of course. Whatever the excuse something must have happened because it’s quite the downgrade isn’t it, from a major shifting of the Earth’s tectonic plates to a spot of precipitation in the air?
It was foggy in Christchurch today actually. Cue the spooky music.
Maybe it’s because just like physics and tarot card readers he’s full of shit? Ringpiece reminds me a lot of a conspiracy theorist and I farken hate them. And just like a theorist it strikes me that someone like Ringpiece doesn’t actually need to prove anything.
Oh sure, science hasn’t yet proven any correlation between the cycle of the moon and the frequencies of earthquakes but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a connection. Likewise no one has actually proven that Tower 11 was an inside job on 9 / 11 but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t and nobody can really say for sure if MI5 killed Princess Diana because again, no one has proved they didn’t.
Only they have, for all three of the above scenarios, but guys like Ringpiece thrive on that little bit of doubt that exists when the full story can’t ever be laid out from start to finish like it is in the movies. They work on coincidence and happenstance and so long as there is fear of the unknown they get the publicity they long for in order to promote their myth conceptions.
And Ringpiece has had loads of publicity. My favorite was when he appeared on Harae Mae John Campbell’s show and got ripped to shreds by a host who was given the dirty nappy of all interviews by his producers and was clearly pissed about it. He got a lot of stick about it too did John but I for one thought he did a fine job tearing strips off a fear monger.
In Ringpiece’s case it’s a win win situation; predicting weather and shit is flaky at best and no one ever expects meteorologists and alike to get it right all of the time. So he predicts a lunar event that if it doesn’t come off means nothing, no sweat off anybody’s sack, but if he gets it right he becomes the authority on everything. Or in his own words:
"My business is only a bunch of opinions, as I have wearily repeated. There is no claim on accuracy; proof or anything other than that I have opinions."
"I don't claim to predict the weather. No-one can. We are not gods. Nobody has all the answers. In my books, it states on paragraph one on page one that what I say is opinion."
Nice bit of bullet dodging that, claiming his is an opinion. The book is $48 by the way and can be found on the shelf labeled ‘B for Bullshit’ at your nearest bookseller. Right next to Kelvin Quickwanks literary efforts.
Christchurch did have a sizeable aftershock last night, 5.1 to be exact. The believers will of course say The Moon Man got it right but that ignores the fact that before he changed his prediction three times, he reckoned it would be a magnitude 7+. In his own opinion, of course.
Perhaps he’ll claim next that tomorrow is going to be Tuesday too, in a remarkable piece of foresight he could have only extracted from his ring piece.

What a cork soaker.
No comments:
Post a Comment