canspice.org

The Monaco Grand Prix is, as every commentator will remind you numerous times during the race, the most glamourous race in all the world. Run on the narrow and unforgiving streets of the Principality of Monaco, it’s often a precessionary race with little, if any, overtaking on the track. Most positions are made up in the pits or through driver retirements.

The 2006 Monaco Grand Prix threatened to live up to its promise, and the race was largely nose-to-tail driving, but there were brief moments of excitement.

The race truly started off on Saturday, the all-important qualifying day. Over the Monaco GP’s history, the winner of the race has come from the top three qualifying positions something like 80% of the time. Clearly qualifying high is important.

In the final qualifying stint, Michael Schumacher’s time was the one to beat. As the chequered flag threatened to drop, Fernando Alonso was on a tear, bettering Schumacher’s split times by roughly three tenths of a second. But when the flag dropped, Schumacher stopped his car at the corner known as Rascasse. Lockup? Stall? At the time it just looked like Schumacher wanted to make it seem like he made a mistake, but actually just parked the car to impede the other drivers on their flying laps.

And impede he did. Alonso’s flyer, where he was up by three tenths, came in about seven one-hundredths slower than Schumacher’s pole time. Mark Webber had an excellent qualifying session, placing third.

But controversy raised its ugly head, and the marshals removed all of Schumacher’s qualifying times, shunting him to the back of the grid. Nearly everybody said this was the right move. A few Ferrari apologists said that it was a black day for Formula One, but all in all it was the right move to make.

This meant Fernando Alonso had the all-important pole, with Mark Webber beside him in second. McLaren Mercedes teammates Kimi Raikkonen and Juan Montoya made up the second row. If history held, the winner would come from this group of drivers.

The four front-runners kept their positions over the first lap, and there was little chaos traditionally associated with Formula One first corners. Christijan Albers cut off his teammate Tiago Monteiro, forcing Monteiro to pit for a new nose, and Albers ended up with a drive-through penalty. On the second lap Raikkonen took full advantage of Webber breaking late at Ste Devote, and quickly proceeded to threaten Alonso’s position. After that the race was largely processional, with some drivers taking occasional looks at overtaking, but no real maneuvers were made.

Enter lap 49, and cue the Williams nightmare. Webber, running in a strong third position, stopped on the hill after Ste Devote with his engine in flames. His teammate Nico Rosberg then crashed into the wall on the last corner. Both suffered from exhaust problems, with Webber’s exhaust burning through electrical wires and Rosberg’s throttle sticking open.

Then, nightmare of nightmares for McLaren, when Raikkonen’s engine expired while following the safety car, which was out for Webber’s incident. This propelled Montoya to second, and a lucky Rubens Barrichello up to third.

Unfortunately Rubino got dinged for speeding in the pitlane, so third went to Jarno Trulli. Unfortunately Trulli got dinged for having an engine that had a propensity for blowing up, so third went to David Coulthard, which he kept to the chequered flag.

Unfortunately Coulthard’s team, Red Bull Racing, was doing a Superman Returns promotion so he got to wear a Superman cape on the podium. At least he didn’t say on television before the race that he’d jump naked into the harbour if the team got on the podium like RBR’s Sporting Director Christian Horner did. Horner jumped into the pool at RBR’s energy centre naked instead, but wrapped in the same Superman cape. No telling whether or not he took the time to “give his ‘wally’ a good rub” as Coulthard suggested…

And Michael Schumacher? He finished in fifth, which is pretty good considering he started from the back of the grid. But as Montoya said, “Last year I started last and finished fourth!”

Remember Eric Julien and his prediction that the Atlantic coasts of North America, Africa, and Europe would be devasted by a tsunami caused by an impacting cometary fragment on May 25, 2006?

Remember how on May 25, 2006 nothing of the sort happened? It so turned out that Julien said, and I quote from his website, “contacts in the American intelligence services confirm the existence of a time window of 48 hours, centered on May 25th at midnight GMT, for the impact a comet fragment south of the Azores.” Taking into account the ambiguity of “May 25th at midnight GMT” (which could be one minute after May 24 23:59 or one minute before May 26 00:01, depending on your point of view), that means the latest that the window closed would have been at the end of May 26, GMT. As we are currently into May 28, GMT, the window’s slammed shut and Eric Julien has been proven wrong.

But wait! He’s scrambling now:

Many people undoubtedly think that the announced event has fizzled and may be readjusting their outlook on life and returning their lives to normal.

I have trouble doing that when I think of all the dreams and other signs which I have witnessed that point to this event. What would otherwise be the purpose of all these warnings? I know the window cannot be extended indefinitely into the future. Two of the people whom I have seen moved out of harm’s way under the pretext of a social gathering are to return home Sunday night. So I would expect Sunday to be the last possible day.

Today I made a review of all my own dreams about the event, using a chronicle written exactly three weeks ago, which has now been on the English website for two and a half weeks, to see whether there was any pattern that could be discerned.

All my dreams about this event happened on a Sunday.

The emphasis is his, not mine.

So there you have it. The comet’s going to hit us Sunday. Not three days ago, not two days ago, but tomorrow.

And when the comet fails to hit on Sunday, I have to wonder how much more scrambling Eric Julien is going to do.

Webpages can be visualized in many ways. The two most obvious are through its rendered product (being what you see when you view it in a web browser) or through its source code. But given the tree-like structure of HTML documents, it should be possible to visualize a webpage as a graph.

Here’s the graph for canspice.org:

I believe that the orange-and-blue cluster at the bottom is the body of the last post — it had a lot of linebreaks and quotes in it that are represented by orange circles. The little yellow cluster is the search form at the top right. The purple circle is the Creative Commons logo in the footer. And the red dagger thing is the flickr photos bit up at the top — although why there aren’t any purple circles associated with that is beyond me.

Thanks to doctorvee for the link.

I’d like to see Geof describe his graph. I loaded it up and it looks quite nice. Busy, too. :-)

If you’re reading this, then it’s May 26, 2006 or later. According to Eric Julien, who describes himself as “former military air traffic controller, twin engine jet pilot and former instructor at astronaut Patrick Baudry’s Space Camp”, there was a tremendous tsunami in the Atlantic Ocean yesterday. As quoted from his website Save Lives in May:

“I have received information psychically, which is corroborated by scientific data, according to which on May 25, 2006 a giant tsunami will occur in the Atlantic Ocean, brought about by the impact of a comet fragment which will provoke the eruption of under-sea volcanoes. Waves up to 200 m high will reach coastlines located above and below the Tropic of Cancer. However, all of the countries bordering the Atlantic will be affected to greater or lesser destructive and deadly levels. This site is dedicated to life, to civic responsibility and to information. There is still time to save lives. Thanks for participating in the world-wide alert!”

This is pretty serious stuff.

And it’s complete bunk.

The comet Julien says is going to hit the Atlantic Ocean is Comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3, which has been in the news recently because astronomers are busy witnessing its breakup. It’s being pulled into dozens of fragments in a rather impressive display.

Now, this comet is admittedly coming closer to Earth than any comet has for more than twenty years, but it’s still going to be pretty far away. Its closest approach is going to be about six million miles away, or about twenty-five times farther away than the Moon is. There’s a zero chance that anything from this comet is going to hit us and cause any sort of devastation.

But Julien says it’s going to hit us. His proof? “Numerous prophecies, including those of Nostradamus, Mother Shipton and of the Bible Codes converge precisely towards this critical period of the end of May 2006″ and “a great number of persons have declared having experienced Atlantic tsunami dreams prior to his first press release.” Oh, and there’s going to be a FEMA tsunami exercise running from 23 to 25 May. One problem: that’s a Pacific coast exercise, so I don’t see how one could even think of using this as proof of an impending Atlantic tsunami.

And others say they have proof as well. His forums are a good place to find this proof, but unfortunately you currently need to be registered to read threads on there. Luckily I signed up for an account so I could see what sort of proof really exists. For example, one person who goes by the name of “Harbingers Kiss” says:

I am an earth sensitive. I predicted the Asian tsunami a couple of weeks before it happened. I also predicted an “earth birthing” event which would be a pretty big volcano. Again, I was right. The tectonic slide that caused the tsunami opened up a fissure in the earth releasing magma at a rate that will cause a landmass to form. I have been verified by a seismic monitoring developer as well. I hear the planet. I also get glimpses of the future. I temper them with quantum slide probability but they are overall at about 87% accuracy. My earth pains and earth tones are at about 98% accuracy.

I usually post at Unknown Country. They started a thread there about your predictions. I usually get a feeling one way or another about other sensitives/psychics predictions. I got no feelings from yours. Actually this is the first time that has happened. This does not mean I think your predictions are false..quite the contrary. To me it means a definite maybe.

“Blue Tempest” says this:

Now I realize that you can’t go driving away everytime you hear a prediction. But several things have led me to the conclusion that Mr. Julien believes what he is saying.

1.He has made this site.
2.He has made this forum.
3.He has set a date.
4.He is reasonably smart, realizing he will be discredited is proven to be false.This to a scientist would be disastrous.

Now, I realize that I’m part of the conspiracy, given I work at an astronomical observatory and all, but I’m not sure that this really qualifies as good proof that a comet is going to strike the Earth. Let’s disassemble their arguments.

First, Harbingers Kiss. Crackpot. Normal people don’t use phrases like “My earth pains and earth tones are at about 98% accuracy.” Case closed.

Second, Blue Tempest. These four things are not difficult at all to achieve. I made this website. I helped set up these forums. Picking a date isn’t all that hard. Watch: December 12, 2008. February 1, 2007. August 30, 2012. There’s three for you, and I hardly even tried. As for Julien being discredited should there be no cometary impact, I don’t think he’s worried. After all, this is a man who’s published two books about extraterrestrials and who’s done no publishable scientific work in his life. I can see how he’s worried about his reputation being tarnished. After all, it’ll be harder for him to sell his stupid predictions to stupid people who believe stupid things like this.

Julien is really pulling on people’s senses of fear, here. While it is best to be prepared than not, it is even better to be prepared to deal with eventualities that stand a passable chance of happening. Preparing yourself against earthquake if you live in Southern California is a good idea. Preparing yourself against hurricane if you live in Florida is a good idea. Preparing yourself against tsunami caused by cometary impact which was, in turn, caused by “extraterrestrial intervention”, that’s not a good idea.

Spreading these false prophecies is fear-mongering, plain and simple. Julien trumps up some kind of pseudo-scientific explanation that impresses the lay-person and causes them to believe that he knows what he’s talking about. Unfortunately his scientific “proof” is not scientific at all, and shows a lack of basic understanding about the scientific method. The reason why fragment S’s nearest approach changed is because more observations of it were made, allowing us to refine its orbit. With more information astronomers were able to figure out that it was going to miss us by a wide margin. There’s no great conspiracy here, simply science at work.

And that might be the saddest thing about this story. It’s not that people believe in this pseudo-science, it’s that people don’t have the grounding in basic scientific principles to realize what’s going on. Unfortunately, with people like Eric Julien spreading disinformation and fear, it’s harder for the proper information to get out to people. Sometimes the truth is boring, and comets missing the Earth don’t make headlines (although comets tearing themselves apart might make headlines in some places — this Subaru press release made the front page of our local paper). Cometary impacts do make headlines, even if they’re made-up ones like this.

(ps. if my tenses sound a little odd, it’s because I’m typing this up on May 22. I’m so confident that Eric Julien’s ideas a bunk that I’m just going to post this now to have it automatically show up on the 26th.)

Remember my trials and tribulations with Hawaiian Telcom back in March? You’d think they’d be finished by now, two and a half months later.

You’d think, but you’d be wrong.

Rewind two and a half months. March 13 rolled around and we finally received service. A few weeks later, I received my April bill that covered the March usage period, and it turns out that they were charging me for the time that we didn’t actually have a phone line physically running to the house. I phoned them back and explained this at the time. They said they’d phone me back with how much my bill was actually going to be, without the service charges between the 3rd and 13th.

Fast-forward to today, when I received my bill for the April usage period. You’ll note that in that fast-forward sequence there was no phone call from Hawaiian Telcom informing me of how much I was going to be credited for. Today’s bill not only doesn’t have the credit for the 3rd to 13th period, it also doesn’t have the $50 credit that they said they gave me back at the beginning of March.

I called them up. Started dialing at 1:13pm. After being on hold, Samantha answered at 1:31pm. I explained the whole story to her, and she said that she didn’t see any note about a credit on my account. It was probably put on by the repairs department, as they deal with installations and scheduling. She transferred me to repairs. On hold again until 1:39pm, when some kind lady answered the phone and said, “Thank you for calling Hawaiian Telcom, how may I help*static*disconnect*”

At this point I started jumping around my office in anger and frustration.

At 2:11 I called back. At 2:34 Lynn answered and “felt my pain”. This time I didn’t get disconnected, and she resubmitted the $50 refund and gave me another $15 refund to cover the 3rd to 13th outage. A timescale for when we should see these refunds?

Possibly the next billing period, but most definitely by the July bill.

July. Four months after getting screwed around by incompetent installers and schedulers.

And as always, when Lynn finished with me she closed with, “Thank you for choosing Hawaiian Telcom.”

As if I had a choice. If I did have a choice Hawaiian Telcom would have been dropped long long ago. As it is I’m stuck with this backwards monopolistic corporation, whose customer service has never been good. Quite frankly, I’d rather have Verizon back than have to deal with Hawaiian Telcom’s shoddy billing department again.

Hopefully I’ll be getting the refunds, and hopefully there won’t be a Part 3 to this whole idiotic saga.