The Future is Here (????)

I'm actually not into fortune-telling. I generally leave that for the National Enquirer and its ilk. However, in a long and checkered career, I've tried to read everything that comes along, just so I can be suitably ignorant on a variety of subjects.
Anyway, I thought I remembered an item or 2 that could have been predictions of the WTC debacle in the works of Nostradamus. As it happens, I ran across 4 or 5. All of which are sufficiently murky that you can apply them or not as it suits you.
However, in the process, I ran across this little ditty:

Those recognized for their learning
Become poor at the change of a King
Some Exiled, without help, without gold
The lettered and letters of little value.

Typical Nostradaman ambiguity. It is interesting to note that this could be applied to our times and industry. At the change of a "King" (shortly after Bush took office - and I should note that even absent Nostradamus's claims of having deliberately made things obscure, presidents hadn't been invented back then). "Those recognized for their learning" - e.g. trained knowledge workers "become poor".
"Those exiled" Maybe H1-B's, but this is a stretch.
And finally "The lettered and letters of little value.". And how many times in the Jobs Discussion have people asked whether getting an advanced degree would make them more employable and told that it probably wouldn't?
Interesting, anyway. Somehow I don't expect to see "Nostradamus predicted tragedy for IT Industry" to be headlining the racks at the local supermarket checkout, however

What Century/Quatrain is this? I can find no other reference to this....

Those recognized for their learning
Become poor at the change of a King
Some Exiled, without help, without gold
The lettered and letters of little value.
Sure he wasn't talking about the Ba'athist party members?

You have to realize that a lot of the Nostradamus quotes are faked.

...which was my point (sort of). If you can't include Century and Quatrain with the quote (or at least provide the original 16th century French

), I'm not inclined to believe it.
Sort of like saying:
And the Lord continued, saying, "You shall not eat any grain of the field or animal of the land that begins with the letter 'X', for that letter is anathma unto Me."
If I can't provide book, chapter, and verse, then I don't really expect people to believe that it is a real quote.
[ July 23, 2003: Message edited by: Joel McNary ]

Apologies. I'd meant to do just that and forgot.
Here 'tis:
VI. 8
And one to think about:
VII. 40

Originally posted by Joel McNary:
Sort of like saying:
And the Lord continued, saying, "You shall not eat any grain of the field or animal of the land that begins with the letter 'X', for that letter is anathma unto Me."
If I can't provide book, chapter, and verse, then I don't really expect people to believe that it is a real quote.

What's that from, the CTW Bible?

VI. 8:

Those who were in the realm for knowledge
Will become impoverished at the change of King:
Some exiled without support, having no gold,
The lettered and letters will not be at a high premium.

Interesting, but also fairly vague. It ceratinly applies to today's situation, but I'm sure it also applies to other situations throughout the years/world. I just don't have the time to think of an example right now....
VII. 40

Within casks anointed outside with oil and grease
twenty-one will be shut before the harbor,
at second watch; through death they will do great deeds;
to win the gates and be killed by the watch.

One to think about? I can provide a coule interpretations, but none of them really make sense...

Those who were in the realm for knowledge
Will become impoverished at the change of King:
Some exiled without support, having no gold,
The lettered and letters will not be at a high premium.

Seems fairly simple. A group of wise men who are advisers to a king will lose their positions and be disgraced when the king falls and another takes his place. They will be impoverished and disgraced. I am fairly certain that I can find a few instances of that happening prior to Nostradamus making that prediction.

Actually, if it seems straightforward, look again. Nostradamus admitted to making his predictions obscure in part for his own self-protection. Though how much protection he needed for events centuries past his (self-predicted) date of death is a good question. Certainly Kings as well, Premiers, Presidents and other authorities undreamed-of back in the days of monarchies change for many reasons. Note that the word was "change" and not "fall".
The I Ching is comprised of 64 hexagrams, which in turn are made up of paired trigrams. Between them all, it is said that everything in the universe can be represented (obviously this must be some sort of hash function

). Such is the ambiguity of oracles from time immemorial. Then again, if we had people running around predicting the future in plain English, life would be tedious and dreadful.
As for me, I'm wise(learn�d), no? (don't answer that!) I'm certainly impoverished and disgraced. However, it's equally true that rulers fall and their ministers are swept away and thus has it ever been. I never said that Notradamus predicted outsourcing, just that the language he used rang eerily true. "Lettered" of course has especially ironic ring in the context of acquiring SCJPs, MCSEs, etc., but the original sense of the word applies too.
On the VII. 40. This is more of a stretch, but the concept of "casks" - that is, hollow containers, associated with lubricants and 20+/- people doing "great" (in the sense of noteworthy, not in the sense of good) deeds and dying in the process rang a bell. Especially if you stretch things even further and consider a Trade Center to be a "gate" of commerce. I'm afraid that those of us not sympathetic to Al-Quaeda wouldn't consider that to be "winning" the gates, but they have a different opinion.
Anyway, it makes about as much sense as some of those "match-the-sequence" sections in the old computer programming aptitude tests ever did.