they can't CHARGE, but they can accept DONATIONS!!!
Posted on 04/28/2007 7:40:32 AM PDT by DogByte6RER
Philly Authorities Shut Down Psychics, Astrologers and Palm Readers
WEIRD BUT TRUE
By LUKAS I. ALPERT, Wire Services
April 28, 2007 -- They should have seen it coming, but maybe that was the problem.
Philadelphia authorities shut down dozens of psychics, astrologers and palm readers after realizing there's a decades-old law on the books that bans fortune-telling for profit.
The law states that fortune-telling "for gain or lucre" is a third-degree misdemeanor.
No fines were levied, but they will be if "these people try to return to work," said a city official.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
These "psychics" and "fortune tellers" obviously weren't very competent if their crystal balls couldn't even tell them that a government raid and shutdown was in their future.
I remember my college astronomy professor once asking my class...
What do you call somebody who is smart at math and science and who studies the stars? Answer - An astronomer.
What do you call somebody who is dumb at math and science and who also studies the stars? Answer - An astologer.
Hundreds of murders in Philly, but by God, they have no psychics there. Now there is a city with their priorities straight.
That’s a good screening process. The good ones are still working.
If any of them were midgets, would the headline read...
“Small Mediums at Large”?
> No fines were levied, but they will be if “these
> people try to return to work,” said a city official.
They’ll be back at by Tuesday at the latest.
The service will be renamed “Lifestyle Consultancy”
and include optional readings at no charge.
The DA will feign horror, but drop all the felony
work to arrest one of these clowns, and focus the
full attention of the DA’s office on a test case.
“Fortunetelling, necromancy, soothsaying, divination, and practice of the Egyptian Art,” (the latter meaning Gypsy fortunetelling,) were all illegal in Connecticut until only a couple of years ago. That probably dated back to Thos. Hooker’s day in the 1630s.
A professional fortune teller, better than the average, once told me of what he called “the fortune teller’s paradoxes”.
To start with, nobody ever asks a fortune teller what they see in the future. That is, what they actually foresee. They might respond by saying, “Well, what do you see in the present?”
That is, if you just got a random snapshot of someone in the future, what would you see? Well, 1/3rd of the time, or so, they would be sleeping. But otherwise, there is no context to what they are doing. Judging by appearances they are older, and probably a little fatter than they are today. But what else?
And unlike with a VCR, there is no “fast-forward” button on seeing into the future. Most of what people do is repetitive and boring as hell. It is like the worst TV show ever.
But, the fortune teller continued, it doesn’t really matter. And this is the other side of the paradox. Most people have a pretty good idea what their future holds: more of the same, getting older and a probably fatter.
The irony is that people do not go to a fortune teller to find out what their future is. They go there to have their future *changed*. They want the fortune teller to give them an instant fix, like a diet where you can eat anything you want and not exercise, and still lose weight.
What makes it even funnier, said this better than average fortune teller, is that I know *how* somebody can change the future to be more like they want—but almost nobody is willing to do it—because in truth, they actually *like* what they are. As much as they whine and complain about their life, they have spent most of it *making* themselves into what they are. They don’t really want to change it.
He said imagine your life as a yardstick. The ticks on it represent the events of you life that you tell yourself are important events, the formative stuff that makes you, you, over and over again.
However, you choose what events you think are important. It is totally subjective. Nothing prevents you from choosing other things and telling yourself, over and over again, that *they* were the most important events in your life.
Say you want to be more athletic in the future. It really, truly helps to over and over think about the times in your past you did athletic stuff, and how important it was and is to you. Pretty soon you will spontaneously start thinking about exercising and doing physical things, and then you will start doing them.
Voila, you have changed your future into a more athletic one.
But, he concluded. People like being who they are. Unless you can wave a magic want and take off 20 pounds. But if you did that, the first thing they would do would be to eat so much food that they would gain it right back, with interest.
LOL - good one.
“Grinning Fortuneteller Attacked”
The assailant just wanted to strike a happy medium.
(You deserved that, you know.)
they can't CHARGE, but they can accept DONATIONS!!!
And I would give almost anything if Court TV would televise the ACLU defending all those loons!
You forgot the trans fat law that was passed to protect the voters and the stink about Gino’s sign.
The murders will have to wait until they decide if it’s leagal to say hello to one another as a greeting.
I thought the official song of Philly was “Welcome to Philadelphia, And Oh By The Way, You Suck!”
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