Druids Hired To Cut Road Accidents 25
You can't say Austrian highway authorities haven't tried everything to make travel safer. It has been revealed that they have had a team of druids on the payroll for the past two years working to drain "negative energy" from areas prone to accidents. Chief engineer Harald Dirnbacher from Austria's motorway authority says, "We were really skeptical at first and certainly didn't want people to know what we were doing, so we kept it secret." Apparently results so far have been so impressive that officials are hiring the druids nationwide. One area's fatal accident rate went from an average of six per year to zero after the druids worked their magic. I assume a few well-placed creeping doom spells can keep the motorway free of road-kill as well.
Traffic avoiding the scary robed guy . . . (Score:1, Funny)
I wouldn't want to have a car crash in front of the creepy, robed guy standing on the side of the road.
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Yes, giving the monks black robes with larger hoods and having them carry scythes was an excellent move.
Another Pro (Score:2)
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Unless they're in combat /w active cooldown or out of reagents.
As much as I hate pseudoscience (Score:3, Funny)
I do appreciate that they have the rudimentary form of an idea that results are an indicator of success. Sure, sure, I'd love it if they'd learn what variance and statistical tests do, but this is a baby step in the right direction.
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Or it might finally set some things straight ;)
See, at my place (not far from Austria), it is a standard practice for a priest of Abrahamic faith (never druids!) to "baptise" stretches of roads or cars (among many other things)...with demonstrably poor results [wikipedia.org] (the dark orange of recent EU memberstates; where people also drive less...)
So...who do they serve?! ;p
So...who do they serve? (Score:3, Insightful)
A god who could not save his own son from being crucified.
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...a point which is...pointless.
An all knowing deity, which supposedly gave us free will (ad hoc knowing the consequences), urges us to commit attrocities (just read Old Testament) and gives itself (Trinity and all that) for suffering (pretty small one, all things considered) to...get us rid from...what that deity supposedly brought upon us.
Well, I can see how it made perfect sense for primitive people...
But was just an imaginary point they accepted, to explain to themselves why yet another, not the first,
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And one group is wrong and the other right (pick the order) because?...
Regression to the mean, cretins! (Score:2)
Old News (Score:1)
The summary links to a blog post, which links to an article in the Croatian Times (which, by the way, doesn't give me the impression of being a serious news source).
I did a bit of digging and found an article [derstandard.at] (in German, but basically the same story, with a little bit more detail and more than a hint of cynicism toward the whole idea) from Der Standard (one of Austria's best newspapers).
Dated: November 2007.
Two and a half years old? C'mon, guys, you can do better than this!
(Disclaimer: Austrian living abroa
Nice work if you can get it I guess (Score:2)
So should I put a druid for hire ad in the newspaper? How do you get a job like this?
So? (Score:1)
It would be interesting to see a rigorous statistical study of this effort, comparing those locations to a comparable period picked from locations that, prior to the experiment, has similar characteristics, to see if there is a significant difference. Pseudoscience, or placebo effect? How do you tell? Let the numbers decide.
oblig. (Score:2)
"Funny, she doesn't look Druish"