Today was the once in a century number combo of 11-11-11, the 11th day of the 11th month of the 11th year of the century. Of course many people decided this was more significant than just being a cool number. Global TV's supperhour news program devoted a segment to the subject, showing people getting married, buying lottery tickets, and so on because they thought this was a lucky, mystically significant, or what have you, day. This included a numerologist from the Numerology Institute of Canada, Gordon Spowart. It will come as no surprise to regular visitors to this blog that I was not amused with seeing him, as numerology is a pseudoscience. But checking out the Institute my annoyance has turned to amusement. As you can see from the website it appears Spowart is the Numerology Institute of Canada all by his lonesome. Arrogance amongst promoters of this kind of stuff is all too common. Cranks love to give themselves grand titles, or create organisations with important sounding names that make it sound like they have large number of supporters and minons.
If only some of my odder interests had a wider audience, I too could make myself sound more important than I am. I could for example start the Rosenberger Research Institute of Canada, since I've got a bunch of Joseph Rosenberger's Death Merchant books in my possession. and probably know more about him than virtually any other Canadian. Unfortunately there's not much you can do to exploit knowledge of crankish '70s pulp writers, versus silliness like numerology, which has all sorts of followers just ripe for the picking.
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