I read this newspaper called the Capital Press. It is one of the few West Coast independents left. It is based in Eugene, Oregon, comes out twice a week weekly, and reports on agriculture and such things. In yesterday’s mailing we got one of those advertising inserts that comes from another planet. I wrote about the “chemtrails” guy last year, and this new stuff is right up there. Here’s one of the best lines:

Highly-engineered and computer-driven, this immune-modulator has earned five Nobel prizes in science.

Dude! An immune-modulator! I gotta get me one!

The stuff they are selling on this professional-looking 8-1/2 x 11 two-sided glossy sheet is an aerosol supplement called Liquid Gold Rx. They list the 38 ingredients thusly:

alfalfa, wild celery, anise, lemon balm, basil, greater burdock, celery, dill, hyssop, rock weed, fennel, ginger, cola nitida, marjoram, great mullein, Abyssinian myrrh, parsley, dog-rose, rosemary, saffron crocus, sage, elder, tea plant, garden thyme, turmeric, verbena, white willow, black cherry, yarrow, garlic, artichoke, motherwort, hop, red raspberry, hawthorn, elecampane, fennel bulbs, juniper

They feed alfalfa to cattle.

Just sayin’.

I suppose we all want to be immunized from the dangers of living. And this aerosol supplement—yes you really do spray it in your mouth, 4x daily—will fight off the toxins and replace it with all the goodness from the “eleven herbs and spices.”

Here’s how it works:

Upon contact with your saliva, the body immediately recognizes LGRx as the perfect, uncontaminated superfood and opens the blood vessels. The liver responds by removing the toxins you’ve taken in from your blood . . .

You know, the usual stuff. But at least they’re honest:

Every individual varies, but within 30 to 60 days, everyone will have his or her own unique experience to share.

Yes. That is exactly what will happen. Every person will have a unique experience. Whether they want to share them is another matter, in fact several may want to when they discover they’ve been ripped off.

One side of the sheet is almost entirely devoted to glyphosate (the stuff in Round-up) and how this fabulous product neutralizes the negative effects of exposure to herbicides. Targeting their ag-oriented audience, I’m sure.

Snake oil is alive and well in the American West.

What’s the best kind of prediction? The one you know will come true? Or the one you can’t lose on?

Here’s what I mean:

What do you want this year, Scorpio? What are you passionate about? Your dreams are the focus of 2019, and guess what? Some of them could come true in a big way!

That’s from horoscope.com and by the way I was born on the 13th of November so that makes me a Scorpio. I note that some sites now include Ophiuchus, the Physician or Serpent-bearer, in their list of zodiac signs. That makes thirteen instead of the usual twelve. Even the astrologers have to recognize physical reality once in a while! But that’s later in November, my sun is still in Scorpius.

That’s the best kind of prediction. Some of my dreams “could” come true! They could! If they do, the prognosticators were right. If they don’t, the prognosticators were still right. That’s like flipping a two-headed coin, man. That’s the way to win in the business of astrological forecasting.

Did you know there is a new field called superforecasting? I’ll bet the astrologers could teach those guys a thing or two about hedging your bets. And if the horoscope-types adopted some superforecasting strategies I suspect they’d be right more frequently. Not that it matters, horoscopes are always right, that is, they work by self-fulfillment. You don’t want reality to intrude too far into the prediction racket.

Superforecasters are the type of people who treat everything as testable hypotheses. Certainty is their enemy, oddly enough. They have to be flexible and adaptable, and they adjust their outlook when they get new information. They don’t have biases, or if they do, they have workarounds. Astrology (and other rackets like Freudian analysis) are the opposite—they have an answer for everything. The logic is circular, and the solutions can always be found in a careful re-reading of the text.

The future is heady stuff. You have to be really smart, or a con artist, or both. More likely both.

I say stick to the present.