Magicman02,
Thanks for clearing that up.



What is amusing is that at the end of Adrian Saints Mentalist Strike Back op-ed piece he puts this in:

"To show that I am also a nice guy, here are some free predictions. You can bet on them if you want, but if you lose money, don't blame me. But I could be right: I did predict the Super Bowl.



2006 NHL Champion: Detroit Red Wings

2006 NBA Champions: Detroit Pistons

2006 NCCA Men's Basketball Champion: Villanova

Super Lotto Plus # for March 18, 2006: 29, 22, 3, 9, 19 and the Mega Number is (use your own intuition and figure it out yourself)"

That paragraph, like much of the rest of the article, is a lovely bit of double speak. I don't know what the Lotto number were for 3-18-2006, but all of his sport predictions were wrong.

Yea he shouldn't done the sports & lotto predictions he got a little cocky during this whole time. He regrets that, but the funny thing is that during that time, over 100 people bought lotto tickets hoping to win. haha!

Thanks for the clarification of the $25,000, magicman.

It adds a layer of information that helps put some other stuff into perspective. However, the fact remains that the "writer's" reaction is not wholly unexpected. Not that it is correct (and I didn't mean to imply it when I said "appropriate"), merely that the motivation for him to write the article is understandable.

Please also notice that nobody went unscathed in my opinion, esp. not myself.

So, if anybody cares to comment and can do so without exposure or anything, what can/should/would have been done differently to obtain a different end result?

I agree with you too, Todd. Hubris breeds nemesis. This has been discussed to death for centuries so I think I do not need to say more.

The only ones that have anything in the way of street creds in regard to lottery prediction are Psychic Madman Jim Karol and wicca priest Elwood "Bunky" Bartlett. And both of these seem to be flukes. Jim took a stab in the dark and it hit, and Bartlett's claim to divine help came after the fact.

Wow, I go away for a day or two and all of this happens!

The extra background on Adrian was enlightening and, yes, I can understand how the nerd decided to attack Adrian.

My psychic senses tell me that the poor guy needed to boost his own self-esteem by pushing someone else down because he feels threatened. I suspect he even jumps up in the middle of the Star Wars movies to protest that there is no way the explosions could be heard in the vacuum of space.

Because "Science Guy" admitted to frequenting these forums, I felt it was a good warning for the newbies and others who don't realise how open to public access this place is.

Otherwise, I tend to agree with you, Lemniscate.

ESPecially best wishes,

Chris

I tend to avoid the lottery predictions ... especially since I'm too cheap to go out and buy a **** ticket.

Headline predictions may have been OK in yesteryear, but in a contemporary era newspapers generally seem to report unpleasant events. This means that you are far more likely to have a headline such as 'person dies in horrible accident' than 'school donates uniforms to charity shop'. (Don't ask me where those examples came from).

The other ways to do a headline prediction are as follows

1) Predict that the headline to the Daily Express will be about Princess Diana (you can be fairly confident that this will be the case on any given day)

2) Predict that the headline to the Daily Mail will be about immigration or crime (again, they don't ever tend to report anything else)

Joking aside, I was on holiday a few years ago and I had a £50 bet with a friend that for the week that we were away, the headlines of the above two newspapers would be as I suggested above. I won.

Simon
(the very smug Guardian reader)

To clarify the bet, on any given day in the 7-day period, either newspaper need to have the headline as stated above.

So why do we post in pennys at all? Why is this forum public?

One answer, which would at least go someway towards helping the problem, is if the magic Café coded its website so that it could not be indexed by search engines.

That's easy. Just put an entry in the robots.txt file.

This is true, Jon. However, I think that the attitude taken by the Café staff (merely based on observations) is pretty simple and does not need/require/want that type of approach. Threads that have "exposure" are removed or put into protected forums, which I believe are not searchable by bots (unless the bots have 50 posts, I suppose).

However, the rest of the site is donation and ad revenue based and there is no way that a site relying on ad revenue would/should prevent their content from being searchable.

I tend to make my prediction, a week in advance, but then I simply create the headline. I'll rob a bank, kill a mugger. 100% sure fire. never fails only, can't believe I'm giving this away. ;p

This is a strong argument NOT to use real names on boards.

If you never use your real world name no one can track you.

The fact he used his real name online made him a sitting duck.

Yes- I hear of many proffesionals who wish that they had pulished their materiasl under different names i.e. Phil Goldstein. It is wise, perhaps I should think of going back and changing mine, although I don't think controversy like this surrounds me.

Again..............

http://www.themagiccafe.com/forums/viewt......um=15&20