Try searching for a “magic shop” in Queensland in the Australian white pages. They have a lot of them.
(via Randi)
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Try searching for a “magic shop” in Queensland in the Australian white pages. They have a lot of them.
(via Randi)
Hilarious… what would it take to have that sort of listing in the States?
Niiiiiiice… ;)
Hahaha, I wonder if that works in any other phone book.
I never thought I’d use this expression literally but: Holy shit!
But… what if I really want to find a real magic shop? What do I do then?
I’m soooo confused!
I was amused, too.
That is so very appropriate.
The TRUTH is to be found in the Australian White Pages.
well, three out of four work
mag·ic (mjk)
n.
1. The art that purports to control or forecast natural events, effects, or forces by invoking the supernatural.
2.
a. The practice of using charms, spells, or rituals to attempt to produce supernatural effects or control events in nature.
b. The charms, spells, and rituals so used.
3. The exercise of sleight of hand or conjuring for entertainment.
4. A mysterious quality of enchantment
But, but, I thought magicians were rational…
(Uri Geller is neither.)
Queensland is not known for it’s progressive nature. I’m very surprised and amused at this. I think it’s safe to say that it’s a stuff up. Must be all that heat, humidty and XXXX beer.
You just have to love the Aussies!
But . . . don’t they all know that magic shop owners have an abnormally high mortality rate?!?
Okay…I know of 5 in Chicago alone. I’ve been promised a lesson as my Ph.D. graduation present. I’ve had a hard time getting some sleights down.
No. That would be owners of The Magic Box.
I wonder if there can ever be a reconciliation between magic shops and the yellow pages? I guess the white pages must incorporate NOMA.
Brian English> There’s a search option under state for “National”… seems to apply to places other than Queensland.
Gee hee! That’s hilarious.
Brian English said “Queensland is not known for it’s progressive nature. I’m very surprised and amused at this. I think it’s safe to say that it’s a stuff up. Must be all that heat, humidty and XXXX beer.”
Not safe at all, given that the assertion is based on zero evidence.
Heat? Brisbane was about 10-15 degrees cooler than Melbourne during the last Australian Open tennis.
It is true that we have far too many religious type up here. But the south has more than its share of wacko religious sects and cults.
Which was the first state to abolish capital punishment? And where in Oz was the last judicial/state murder held?
Oh shit. That’s awesome! Go Queensland!
I, too, was amused… until I scrolled down to find “schools & colleges”.
Wow, REAL magic shops! They even have wizards in mediaeval robes performing strange rituals.
Daily performances, no admission charge (although there may be some costs involved in getting out).
@#21
Randy, unless I’m mistaken, the schools and colleges are catholic schools and colleges. Though to be fair, they probably should fall under the heading of Magic Schools, and not Magic Shops.
LMAO! I didn’t see it coming.
I love the Aussies.
Randy,
Don’t you need magic shops to fend off cyclones? Queensland could get another one in the next few days.
I suspect a naughty programmer. Possibly a pharyngulite. Naughty naughty! ROFL!
Finally! A White Pages search engine that works!
Speaking of Fourecks, I’m now watching the Terry Pratchett doc on his living with Alzheimers. Some douche claimed that Terry had “found god after years as an atheist”.
Either a zero-taste joke about loss of mental power or another case of praying on the vulnerable.
Terry is awesome brave and, although looking at ‘alt treatments’, holds them up to science standards.
Well, at least it’s truth in advertising. How many of you are familiar with the “St. Jude Shops”, in which a superstitious Catholic can buy a $1.17 little plastic St. Joseph statue, take it home, bury it in your front yard, and voila! your house will be sold!
My ex-wife believed that crap. And she wasted our money at palm readers and tarot card shops too.
Magic Shops. Yup.
In addition to Roger Scott, and in response to Brian Scott:
Where does Fred Nile come from?
S/
win. Someone is getting fired though
We used to go to them as kids, they’re basically “magic” trick shops with party tricks and some practical joke stuff. All the usual things like whoopie cushions, stink bombs, card tricks, etc. Fun for scheming kids…
@heraclides: It doesn’t work unless unless you actually go and do the search and see what comes up.
Unless you grew up in an unusually entertaining religion, in which case I apologise for assuming you hadn’t checked it out
Best White Pages search result ever.
Truth in advertising, and all.
Awesome. Just..
Awesome.
Aww hell. That link just cost me a keyboard – it reacted poorly to the diet coke that exited my nose.
Not safe at all, given that the assertion is based on zero evidence.
Heat? Brisbane was about 10-15 degrees cooler than Melbourne during the last Australian Open tennis.
It is true that we have far too many religious type up here. But the south has more than its share of wacko religious sects and cults.
Which was the first state to abolish capital punishment? And where in Oz was the last judicial/state murder held?
Banana Benders are sure touchy. Can’t even make a joke.
OK, based on zero evidence? I give you Sir Jo and Lady flow, paragons of liberal values and liberal laws. They’re legends up there no? :)
As for the rest, if you think Victoria on average is hotter than QLD, then you’re a looney as the BOM will show. If you think Victoria on average is more conservative than QLD then I think you’re wrong, but that’s only an opinion (based on all the red necks I know moving to FNQ and loving it). On law and order, I don’t think QLD can point fingers (Palm Island, etc), but what Bolte did in having that bloke hung was pure political bastadry.
Anyway, I was just making a joke.
“OK, based on zero evidence? I give you Sir Jo and Lady flow, paragons of liberal values and liberal laws. They’re legends up there no? :)”
Good riddance to them, sure. But how did they manage to conspire to get the link between “magic shop” and Catholic Church in the white pages search? That was actually the point. There is still zero evidence presented for a stuff up. It was just an unsubstantiated guess.
I did not say Victoria is hotter than Qld. But for many years, we have watched the tennis players endure atrocious conditions at Melbourne Park while it has been far cooler in Brisbane. That actually was as far as the comment went.
Southerners seem to be very atletic; leaping to conclusions :).
That’s frackin’ awesome! I can’t stop smiling/laughing/smiling about this one.
That they listed the Catholic church under ‘magic shop’ is great irony, but why would it also list a Childcare Centre?
Well, maybe more like voodoo than magic, but close enough.
I laughed out loud.
@29: about the St. Joseph statues: they come with instructions that say if you bury it in the back yard, list with a good agent, bake brownies before an open house, keep the house nice and neat, and price it competitively, you’ll sell the house. It does not say what happens if you do all those other things but do not bury crap in your back yard. But I think we all know….
Christiaan: Mary Mackillop childcare centres. She was a nun. They’re Catholic childcare centres.
(same reason the schools and colleges are included, Randy.)
ROFL
Yay for Queensland. Bet you that most people there just laugh at this instead of flipping out.
Which is probably why Ken Ham got exported here.
I really should have put a “:)” after my comment! I was just replying _in jest_ to “statist” comments – ironic since this blog is supposed to be about logic and facts – not blind faith in something being true. However, QLD does have the best football team.
S/
Hee hee, I love it…
Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s a naughty programmer though… I use AussieWP regularly and ever since the website changed to being managed by Sensis, it returns garbled nonsense no matter what you enter in the search fields. Even if you have the business name, suburb and state, it will return 20 listings from states and suburbs that don’t even have a similar business name!
I’d like to think it’s a neat coincidence, not a deliberate programmer with a sense of humour… who knows though?
And every one of those magic shops can turn crackers into body parts. Amazing.
Hilarious! That really made my day better PZ, especially after that shit show video you posted this morning that made me want to rip my hair out.
Sadly, this is just because the whitepages site is totally useless. The database is full of garbage and the rules for what is returned are set by marketing drooling on paper to make pretty patterns and then demanding the engineers implement it. Bitter much? YES
I wonder what you get if you search for “knock shop”?
Makes me proud to to live in Queensland.
Despite the cyclones.
Brian and Roger: What on earth are you southerners arguing about. We are all much better off than those in the US who share the only thing we have in common.
At least the Xians here know better than to hassle us during the footy and cricket seasons, which seem to be getting closer to merging.
This will soon make them unable to hassle us at all.
No naughty programmers required – there’s a mention of Magic House (Speech and Drama) (presumably a drama school), and elsewhere several cases of “Tuck Shop” (that’s Orstraylian for School Canteen). No mystery, just Sensis’s not-very-intelligent search engine. We’re spoiled by Google’s PageRank so we don’t realise that other, lesser search engines just work by indexing all the words and treating them equally.
When you cross the border into Queensland, you need to wind your watch back 50 years.
LOL !
@ 53,
when you walk from the Services club on the NSW side across Boundary Street to Mackers on the QLD side,you have to set your watch back one hour,and only in summer.
It has benefits on New Year’s Eve,I can tell you.
My experiences with the QLD health system would let me estimate that they are roughly 15 years behind the first world,and 5-10 behind the other states.
Oh my. Whoever made that happen is a real magician.
Made my day. I wonder if they also have crackers disappear?
lol, i love it
And THAT is why he is Amazing! Nice find Mr. Randi :)
eddie at #28:
There was some press about Pratchett supposedly finding god, based on a short bit in an interview with an unfortunate headline. The full story is here:
http://www.fromrimtohub.com/486/big-god-brouhaha/
Pratchett still refers to the experience once in a while, but he continues to insist that he is not spiritual or religious.
lol – what a classic.
Re atheists converting to xianity (sp? insanity…er) the only person I know that has done this suffered severe brain damage following a stroke at age 24. He got back on his feet after about 1 year of rehab. Last time I saw him he was handing out leaflets at the local shopping centre for some wackaloons. I think he was lonely (not working, lost touch with friends etc). He told me under his breathe (still able to grin and obviously with sense of humour intact):
“You’d have to be brain damaged to convert to christianity”
Currently, more than sixty percent of Queensland has been declared a disaster area due to cyclones and flooding. (And 54% is under drought declaration. Isn’t the Australian climate wonderful?) I’m wondering how long until someone claims it’s Divine Retribution for this unspeakable desecration.
Even more amusing than when I worked on the IT Helpdesk at work many years ago when somebody hacked the White Pages to divert you to random pr0n sites.
We had a stack of calls from panicked people denying that that were trying to do anything inappropriate.
Frackin’ brilliant!
I’m in one of the slightly floody bits of Queensland, but moved to higher ground a few months ago. The roads (3! count’em! 3!) are all cut intermittently by flash-floods, but so far there has been no serious interruption of the beer supply. Bread, milk, and meat are another matter (interesting that we’re surrounded by beef cattle for thousands of km, but it’s impossible to get a steak worth eating at any time). Bread and beer we can make ourselves anyhow, but any suggestions on how to home-brew milk?
If an atheist was behind this little joke, singling out the Catholics seems very slightly unfair. Maybe someone at the White Pages is a Baptist, Adventist, Mormon, JW, Hillsonger, or old-fashioned Mick-hating Anglican?
mrcreosote @ 53 “When you cross the border into Queensland, you need to wind your watch back 50 years.”
Hey! As a native Queenslander I resent that. In Joh’s time it was about 20-30 years, but we’ve caught up a lot since. Now it’s only 5-10 and one hour (in summertime only), at least in Brisbane. I’d like to think the WP search result was intentional, but I think it probably is a result of bad programming. I wonder if the god-botherer-in-charge knows. :)
Pay attention.
Eric TF Bat has already explained the result at #52.
From the large number of words in the Catholic entry, one would expect that they show up in a lot of searches. I leave it to those with too much time on their hands to come up with other humourous combinations of words that will find the Catholics.
Oh alright. head palm will get you the catholic church. It also brings up several government listings. They are another easy target because of the huge entries for them.
Majik Kracker Shoppe, indeed.
Didn’t find Anya Jenkins anywhere?
Someone mentioned Uri Geller?
There is a TV show in Germany called ‘the next Uri Geller’. Is this meant to be a good thing? Is this a threat? Like, you’re a crook and we’ll prove it in public?
Brian and Roger: What on earth are you southerners arguing about. We are all much better off than those in the US who share the only thing we have in common. Nothing. I was having a bit of fun. When I was up in Cairns two weeks ago, I was joking with the locals about how bloody steamy it was, and they were joking about how dry it was down in Mexico. Stereotypical piss taking. Seemed like no one took themselves too seriously. Perhaps the internet makes people get defensive. It was just a joke, I like Queensland, and think it’s no worse than Victoria (better in fact, you guys have coconut palms). Hopefully that’s cleared up any misunderstandings. Now, about those bastards from NSW?
I want to know what’s so special about the Townsville region? Why are their churches classified as “Magic Shops”?
If you say you go back 50 years when coming to QLD, I reckon you haven’t been here for a while. Yes, it’s laid back, but there are definitely things happening here – it’s a really happening music scene for one thing, as most of my musically informed Sydneysiders and Melbournites agree. So many great things happening in new music in Brisbane, and even Cairns and Rockhampton.
Go Queensland.
That gave me a nice laugh :)
Thank you!
Nah, that’s WA, – QLD is only 40 years behind. But they are getting better at bending them bananas.
This made me laugh out loud! I love the Aussies.
They seem to be missing Government Offices in the listings.
.
@33: Ah… Catholics have a major problem… (JK, of course, simplistic search engines, etc…)
@35: Precisely!
@50: Smash (car crash) repairs, what else?
@75: You’re right, but what did they ever do for us? (Nicked from a certain film.)
Makes you wonder why they couldn’t use a local installation of google, though? Commercial reasons, perhaps?
And I’m surprised it doesn’t list any actual magic shops. What’s with that?
Smiley @ #70
Too much to list! :)
Truth in advertising?
I am in one of the wet bits between Townsville and Ingham.
No dramas in my immediate area at present, though the situation could easily change in the next day or so if the king tide (4.1m) due Monday is backed up by a storm surge from one of those menacing low pressure systems lurking off the coast…
I currently have a house guest up from Brisbane and as we were walking up my bush road through knee-deep water (car parked on the other side of what is currently a massive swamp), I casually warned that we should keep an eye out for displaced crocodiles in the water. Friend incredulously gave me a long hard stare to see if I was at all serious.
Next day’s lead local newspaper story was about a 1.6m freshwater crocodile being run over on one of the busy main roads in Townsville.
Things don’t sound too good up in the Gulf either.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/australia/4512324/Crocodiles-washed-into-flooded-Australian-towns.html
Arrr, but we love it up here!
This post was indeed a welcome ray of sunshine PZ.
Sauceress, the Townsville Bulletin has a vacancy for a fact-checker. The Freshwater croc (C. johnstoni) only occurs west of the Divide, so the unseen lurkers in your driveway are actually Salties. Step carefully.
Up on the Gulf they have both kinds… (Country and Western) but I’m in Mount Isa, where road-killed Freshies are not unknown. (Haven’t seen one this year, but picked up a road-killed turtle last night, on the same causeway where a 14-yo kid got washed into a pipe and died last weekend). The roads through town are notoriously vulnerable to flash-floods, and I got the home-brew kit bubbling as soon as the rain started, but so far the pubs haven’t run out.