The haunted sentry box

A while back, my wife and I were lucky enough to have the opportunity to visit the lovely island of Puerto Rico.  On the way there, Carol asked me what I wanted to do while we were in San Juan.  I thought about all the possibilities -- lounging on the beach, swimming, snorkeling, hiking, seeing the sights -- so of course what I said was, "I want to see the Haunted Sentry Box."

I first ran into the tale of the Haunted Sentry Box of Old San Juan when I was perhaps twelve years old, and happened upon a copy of C. B. Colby's book Strangely Enough.  This book is a whimsical, often scary, sometimes hilarious account of dozens of "true tales of the supernatural," each only a page or two long.  It was one of my first encounters with someone who claimed that ghosts, UFOs, and monsters could be real, and is one of the things that started me down the long and twisty road that led to Skeptophilia.  (I still have my battered and much-reread copy.)

The Tale of the Haunted Sentry Box is chilling in its simplicity.  In it, we hear about a sentry "many years ago" in the fortress of San Cristóbal in the oldest part of San Juan, who was assigned duty in one of the stone sentry boxes that jut out from the main wall.  He was reluctant, we're told, because it was a lonely post, and he had a "feeling of foreboding."  And sure enough, when another soldier went to relieve him some hours later, the sentry box was empty.  His superiors were certain the man had deserted.

One of the sentry boxes on the wall of San Cristóbal.  I have to admit, it wouldn't be a job for the claustrophobic.

So the second soldier was assigned to take the missing man's place, and a watch was set on the wall overlooking the sentry box.  Only shortly afterwards, a searing light blazed from inside the sentry box, shining out through the slit-like windows, and a "piercing scream" split the night.  The watchman roused his superiors from sleep, and they ran to investigate.  The second soldier was now missing as well -- the inside walls were "black with soot," and there was a strong smell of sulfur.

The sentry box was, understandably, never used again.

See why I wanted to go there?  So we hiked on over to San Cristóbal, paid our five bucks' admission fee, and explored the ancient walls and rooms of the fortress.  But although "La Garita del Diablo" was marked on maps -- proving that Colby hadn't, at least, made the story up himself -- we couldn't find the actual item.

Me, exploring one of the non-haunted sentry boxes of San Cristóbal.  I detected no soot, sulfur, or traces of missing soldiers.

Finally, after perhaps an hour of wandering around, I decided to ask in the souvenir shop (of course there's a souvenir shop) about the Haunted Sentry Box.  Could I have directions for how to get there?

The young woman behind the counter looked alarmed.  "Oh, no, no," she said, her eyes wide.  "We do not allow anyone to go there, sir."

"Really?" I said.  "Why?  I was hoping to see it for myself."

"It is not allowed," she said firmly.  From her expression, she looked torn between crossing herself and forking the sign of the evil eye in my direction.

She added reluctantly that there was, however, a point on the exterior wall where one can lean out and peer down toward La Garita del Diablo, if I was so determined to blight the memory of my visit with such a place.  Eager to so blight myself, I followed her directions to the wall's edge, and leaned over.  And here it is:

Not impressive at this distance, perhaps.  And I wasn't able to pick up any presentiments of evil through my binoculars when I scanned the place.  No black smoke curling up from the windows, no leering face in the shadows of the door.  It looked just like all of the other sentry boxes we saw, both in San Cristóbal and in the big fortress of El Morro only a mile westward along the coast of San Juan Harbor.

So the whole thing was a little anticlimactic.  Here I hoped to give Satan a good shot at me, and I was prevented from doing so by some silly regulation about protecting the tourists from being vaporized.

I'm happy to say that the remainder of the trip was wonderful, and I did get to spend a lot of time lounging on the beach in swim trunks, drinking coconut rum, and trying unsuccessfully to get rid of all the sand stuck to my legs.  We also spent a happy half-day hiking in the El Yunque Rain Forest, only an hour's drive to San Juan, which is a must-see for birders and other nature lovers.

But I have to confess to some disappointment about the Haunted Sentry Box.  So near, and yet so far.  Not only did I not get incinerated by Satan, our airplane crossed the Bermuda Triangle (twice) and we didn't disappear.  You know, if the world of the paranormal is so eager to interact with us living humans -- and to give a skeptic his well-deserved comeuppance -- they really aren't taking these opportunities very seriously.

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Requiem for an old friend

My fascination for astronomy started a long time ago.  I started learning the constellations when I was about six, and received a telescope as a Christmas present from my grandmother when I was eight.  Just about any clear night it was a good bet I'd be out in my front yard looking up at the stars, wondering what it was like out there, thinking about what other planets might host life -- and if somewhere there was a little alien boy looking back my way and wondering the same thing.

It was about that time that I found out about the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico.  One of the many astronomy books I had called the three-hundred-meter radio dish "our eye on the sky" -- it was my first introduction both to the idea that not all telescopes looked like the little tube with lenses on a stand that I owned, and that it was possible to "see" the sky using wavelengths of light that were invisible to human eyes.  Also, if you were to view the sky with a radio telescope (or in microwaves, or x-rays, or ultraviolet light, or whatever) you would see a very different set of features than the familiar twinkling points of light set against a black background.

In the microwave region, for example, you'd see light coming from basically all directions at once -- the "three degree microwave background radiation" which Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson discovered -- and which is one of our most persuasive pieces of evidence of the Big Bang.  (This discovery was made not at Arecibo but at the Holmdel Horn Antenna in New Jersey.)  X-ray astronomy is how black holes were discovered, and we know about the terrifyingly powerful Wolf-Rayet stars because of telescopes sensitive to the ultraviolet region of the spectrum.

Arecibo, though, was particularly evocative, not only for its function but because of its site, in a limestone sinkhole in the jungles of northern Puerto Rico.  Add to this its role in searching for signs of extraterrestrial life, and you have a combination sure to capture the imagination.  Because of this it made a number of appearances in science fiction, such as the 1994 episode of The X Files called "Little Green Men," and most notably, the amazing 1997 movie Contact, which remains my number-one favorite movie ever, not only for the story but because of a tour de force performance by Jodie Foster as the indomitable astronomer Ellie Arroway.

[Image is licensed under the Creative Commons Mariordo (Mario Roberto Durán Ortiz), Arecibo radio telescope SJU 06 2019 6144, CC BY-SA 4.0]

So it was with considerable sadness that I found out a couple of weeks ago that Arecibo was being permanently dismantled.  Earlier this year, a pair of cable breaks ripped gashes in the dish, and it seemed like the venerable telescope was unrepairable.  As if to confirm that, just two days ago the nine-hundred-ton equipment platform collapsed, falling almost two hundred meters and destroying the entire center of the telescope.

"When we looked outside the control room, we started to see the eventual downfall of the observatory," observatory director Ángel Vázquez said.  "After the breakage of two cables earlier this year, strands of the remaining three cables had been unraveling in recent days, increasing the strain.  And because two of the support towers maintained tension as the collapse occurred, some of the falling equipment was yanked across the side of the dish rather than falling straight down through its focal point...  This whole process took thirty seconds, and an icon in radio astronomy was done."

Vázquez isn't the only one to feel its loss deeply.  "While life will continue, something powerful and profoundly wonderful is gone," said astronomer Seth Shostak, whose work with SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) was a good part of the inspiration for Contact.

I understand the sentiment.  The whole thing makes me feel something like grief.  Arecibo has been an inspiration to me since I was a child, and its destruction is like losing an old friend.  I know there are other, and more powerful, telescopes out there, but this one seemed to me to be a symbol of our search for something beyond ourselves, for unraveling the secrets of the universe while still right here, looking up into the skies from our home planet.

So farewell to Arecibo.  There will always be something unique and marvelous about the image of that huge telescopic eye in the Puerto Rican jungle.  As Seth Shostak pointed out, its loss won't stop our yearning for knowledge, but it's hard to imagine finding something as grand and iconic to take its place in our imaginations.

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One of the most compellingly weird objects in the universe is the black hole -- a stellar remnant so dense that it warps space into a closed surface.  Once the edge of that sphere -- the event horizon -- is passed, there's no getting out.  Even light can't escape, which is where they get their name.

Black holes have been a staple of science fiction for years, not only for their potential to destroy whatever comes near them, but because their effects on space-time result in a relativistic slowdown of time (depicted brilliantly in the movie Interstellar).  In this week's Skeptophilia book-of-the-week, The Black Hole Survival Guide, astrophysicist Janna Levin describes for us what it would be like to have a close encounter with one of these things -- using the latest knowledge from science to explain in layperson's terms the experience of an unfortunate astronaut who strayed too close.

It's a fascinating, and often mind-blowing, topic, handled deftly by Levin, where the science itself is so strange that it seems as if it must be fiction.  But no, these things are real, and common; there's a huge one at the center of our own galaxy, and an unknown number of them elsewhere in the Milky Way.  Levin's book will give you a good picture of one of the scariest naturally-occurring objects -- all from the safety of your own home.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Lying to your face

My last post was about how reluctant I am to post about politics.  So, predictably, this post is about: politics.

I've been watching the unfolding humanitarian disaster in Puerto Rico with something akin to horror. Not just for the suffering of the people -- which is considerable -- but for the callous indifference with which Donald Trump is addressing the situation.  First responders have said that the extent of devastation is unknown at this time, but we do know that 95% of the island is still without power, almost 60% without potable water, and 72% without access to telephone service.  San Juan's mayor, Carmen Yulín Cruz, appealed to the federal government for help, and what did Trump do?

Chide the Puerto Ricans for "wanting everything to be done for them."  Point out how far in debt they are.    Pat himself on the back for his "fantastic response" to the disaster.

Others -- most others, in fact -- were not nearly so complimentary.  General Russel Honoré, who headed up President Bush's response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, was scathing.  "The mayor's living on a cot, and I hope the President has a good day of golf," Honoré said.  "The President has shown again he don't give a damn about poor people.  He doesn't give a damn about people of color.  And that SOB that rides around in Air Force One is denying services needed by the people of Puerto Rico.  I hate to say it that way but there's no other way to say it."

All of which brings up something I've mentioned before; Donald Trump lies every time he opens his mouth.  He has such a tenuous grasp on the truth that columnist Chris Cilizza has said that he's "living in an alternate universe."  Here are a few of the recent lies Trump has told, none of which he's backed down from:

• FEMA and the first responders in Puerto Rico engaged in a "massive food and water delivery."  The fact is -- and this has been confirmed by people there on site -- there's been no widespread distribution of food and water, because most of the roads are still impassable. 
• When Mayor Yulín Cruz said that what he'd said was flat out wrong, he lashed out at her, saying that evidently the "democrats had said you must be nasty to Trump."  Any contradictions between what he said and what's coming out of Puerto Rico are false, because the "press is treating him unfairly."
• His lies don't just center around the hurricane and Puerto Rico.  No, he's been lying for ages.  Another recent one centered around the proposed health care bill.  Trump said, more than once, that the Senate actually did have the votes to pass the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, but there was "one senator who is in the hospital."  They didn't, and there wasn't.
• And, of course, there's been no meddling in anything by the Russians.  At a rally for Luther Strange, who lost his primary bid to take Jeff Sessions's seat in the Senate to the spectacularly right-wing Roy Moore, Trump said it was "... the Russian hoax.  One of the great hoaxes.  Are there any Russians in the audience?  I don't see any Russians."  This, despite the fact that the heads of the FBI, CIA, and NSA, and the former Director of National Intelligence, all agree that there is overwhelming evidence of Russian interference in the election.
• This pathological lying is not just by Trump himself, but by members of his administration.  Apropos of the proposed tax reform bill, Gary Cohn, director of the White House Economic Council, said, "The wealthy are not getting a tax cut under our plan."  Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin concurred, adding that the bill, if passed, would reduce the deficit by a trillion dollars.  Not to be outdone, Trump himself weighed in, saying that he wouldn't benefit at all personally from the bill.  Howard Gleckman, of the Tax Policy Center, says that all three of these are blatant lies.  "There is no plausible way Congress can fully fund all of the tax cuts in this outline while complying with its constraints on revenue-raisers," Gleckman writes.  "Businesses would receive the biggest tax cuts, which would ultimately benefit the highest income households... Tax cuts for corporations and, especially, pass-through businesses, would mostly benefit the highest-income households."  Of the benefit to the economy, Gleckman was unequivocal:  "Despite the president’s promises, it is implausible that this plan would permanently boost the economy.  Trillions of dollars in lost revenue would add to the federal debt, raise interest rates, and make it more costly for businesses to invest.  Those costs would offset the benefits of lower corporate tax rates and expensing."
• He said at a rally in Charlottesville that the U.S. had become a "net energy exporter for the first time ever just recently" -- implying, of course, that it was his policies that had caused this.  The problem is, the claim is flat-out false.  Politifact analyzed this statement from every angle they could think of, and no matter how you interpret it, it's wrong.  

And so on and so forth.  And yet... and yet... there are still people defending him.  Today I saw someone post that the well-deserved backlash Trump is receiving because of his petty, nasty, vindictive response to the Puerto Rico disaster is because "they always want to find a way to criticize the United States of America."  No, "they" (whoever "they" are) aren't criticizing the U.S., they're criticizing the President, who has once again shown himself to be a narcissistic asshole who takes any questioning of his words or actions as a personal assault.

Oh, and Puerto Rico is part of the United States of America.  Awkward, that.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

So this brings us back to a place we've been before; at this point, defending Donald Trump is to side with a man who has zero respect for the truth, and lies continuously, apparently without any twinge of guilt.  He's warped people's attitude toward the media to the point that all he has to do is shriek "fake news" or "lying reporters" and they believe every word that comes out of his mouth (and disbelieve anything contrary that they see, hear, or read).

In short: supporting this man at this point is unconscionable.  I don't care what your political affiliation is, what race, what religion, or anything else.  If you are still in support of Donald Trump, you are putting yourself behind one of the worst people ever elected to public office in the United States.  And I honestly don't know how you can sleep at night.

The haunted sentry box

The reason for my recent absence from Skeptophilia is that my lovely wife surprised me on Valentine's Day with plane tickets and a hotel reservation for a quick trip to San Juan, Puerto Rico.  This would be a wonderful gift at any time, but was especially magnificent considering the time of year.  Being a southerner, the winters in upstate New York make me want to crawl under my down comforter in November and stay there until May.  And her timing was impeccable; we've had a mild winter, but were gone for one of the nastiest spells of weather we've had thus far.  (In fact, the trip almost didn't happen when the jet engine wouldn't start in Rochester the day we left, because at seven below zero Fahrenheit it was simply too cold.)

But the engines finally started, and we were up in the air and winging our way toward Puerto Rico.  On the way there, Carol asked me what I wanted to do while we were in San Juan.  I thought about all the possibilities -- lounging on the beach, swimming, snorkeling, hiking, seeing the sights -- so of course what I said was, "I want to see the Haunted Sentry Box."

I first ran into the tale of the Haunted Sentry Box of Old San Juan when I was perhaps twelve years old, and happened upon a copy of C. B. Colby's book Strangely Enough.  This book is a whimsical, often scary, sometimes hilarious account of "true tales of the supernatural," each only a page or two long.  It was one of my first encounters with someone who claimed that ghosts, UFOs, and monsters could be real, and is one of the things that started me down the long and twisty road that led to Skeptophilia.

The Tale of the Haunted Sentry Box is chilling in its simplicity.  In it, we hear about a sentry "many years ago" in the fortress of San Cristobal in the oldest part of San Juan, who was assigned duty in one of the stone sentry boxes that jut out from the main wall.  He was reluctant, we're told, because it was a lonely post, and he had a "feeling of foreboding."  And sure enough, when another soldier went to relieve him some hours later, the sentry box was empty.  His superiors were certain the man had deserted.

One of the sentry boxes on the wall of San Cristobal.  I have to admit, it wouldn't be a job for the claustrophobic.

So the second soldier was assigned to take the missing man's place, and a watch was set on the wall overlooking the sentry box.  Only shortly afterwards, a searing light blazed from inside the sentry box, shining out through the slit-like windows, and a "piercing scream" split the night.  The watchman roused his superiors from sleep, and they ran to investigate.  The second soldier was now missing as well -- and the inside walls were "black with soot" and there was a strong smell of sulfur.

The sentry box was, understandably, never used again.

See why I wanted to go there?  So we hiked on over to San Cristobal, paid our five bucks' admission fee, and explored the ancient walls and rooms of the fortress.  But although "La Garita del Diablo" was marked on maps -- proving that Colby hadn't, at least, made the story up himself -- we couldn't find the actual item.

Me, exploring one of the non-haunted sentry boxes of San Cristobal.  I detected no soot, sulfur, or traces of missing soldiers.

Finally, after perhaps an hour of wandering around, I decided to ask in the souvenir shop (of course there's a souvenir shop) about the Haunted Sentry Box.  Could I have directions for how to get there?

The young woman behind the counter looked alarmed.  "Oh, no, no," she said, her eyes wide.  "We do not allow anyone to go there, sir."

"Really?" I asked.  "Why?  I was hoping to see it for myself."

"It is not allowed," she said firmly.  From her expression, she looked torn between crossing herself and forking the sign of the evil eye in my direction.

She added reluctantly that there was, however, a point on the exterior wall where one can peer down toward La Garita del Diablo, if I was so determined to blight the memory of my visit with such a place.  Eager to so blight myself, I followed her directions to the wall's edge, and leaned over.  And here it is:

Not impressive at this distance, perhaps.  And I wasn't able to pick up any presentiments of evil through my binoculars when I scanned the place.  No black smoke curling up from the windows, no leering face in the shadows of the door.  It looked just like all of the other sentry boxes we saw, both in San Cristobal and in the big fortress of El Morro only a mile westward along the coast of San Juan Harbor.

So the whole thing was a little anticlimactic.  Here I hoped to give Satan a good shot at me, and I was prevented from doing so by some silly regulation about protecting the tourists from being vaporized.  

I'm happy to say that the remainder of the trip was wonderful, and I did get to spend a lot of time lounging on the beach in swim trunks, drinking coconut rum, and trying unsuccessfully to get rid of all the sand stuck to my legs.  We also spent a happy half-day hiking in the El Yunque Rain Forest, only an hour's drive to San Juan, which is a must-see for birders and other nature lovers.

But I have to confess to some disappointment about the Haunted Sentry Box.  So near, and yet so far. Not only did I not have my soul stolen, our airplane crossed the Bermuda Triangle (twice) and we didn't disappear.  You know, if the world of the paranormal is so eager to interact with us living humans, they really aren't taking these opportunities very seriously.

Obamapocalypse

I have bad news for you.  I know it's the holiday season, and all, and this could be kind of a buzzkill, but duty is duty.

We're all going to die.

Well, that may be a bit of an exaggeration.  Most of us are going to die.  There's going to be an earthquake, followed by an asteroid impact that will kill huge numbers, then floods and pestilence and other fun stuff.  And you'll never guess whose fault it all is.  Never in a million years.

Let me give you a hint:  "Thanks, Obama."

Pastor Efrain Rodriguez, a self-styled Puerto Rican "prophet," has issued dire warnings to the United States.  We need to batten down the hatches, because it's too late to mend our ways, he says.  President Obama has led us too far down the road to perdition:

The President of the U.S. asked Congress for ALL Power.  He plans to have absolute control during this Emergency.  This means NO elections.  He has taken advantage of the imminency of this coming disaster.  This totalitarian power is a terrible danger.  This message should be sent to all Congressmen: you still have time to revoke this power.  Politicians, revoke the power you have given Obama.  You have no idea what you will face.

Sure.  The Republicans now control both houses of Congress.  It's completely plausible that the president would go to Congress and say, "Hey, I'd like to see a bill passed that gives me ALL power." And they would say, "Oh, sure!  Here you go!"

Then we hear about some of the awful things the president has done:

Obama does not love this nation, or Christ.  In his second term, he has shown his true intentions against everything that is Christian.  All the laws that he has signed indicate that he plans to persecute the church...  He signed laws never before signed.

Because signing laws that have already been signed makes sense, somehow?

We do find out some good news, however.  Obama is not the Antichrist:

Many believe he is the Antichrist, but he is not. He is only the antichrist's helper.  He does his dirty work.  Obama is only preparing the way for the Real Antichrist, who will be revealed after the church departs from this earth.

I didn't know the church was scheduled to depart!  Let me know when.  I'll be there to wave goodbye.

But the fact that Obama isn't the Antichrist doesn't mean he isn't a bad guy:

He does not chastise or penalize the homosexuals, or the muslims [sic], no matter what they do, yet he takes every action to penalize and extinguish the church of Christ.  He takes away freedoms from Christians, while at the same time giving freedoms to those who blaspheme God.  Even Putin, the Russian President, rebuked him for this.  Woe to you, poor, poor man!

At last count, Christians made up 74% of the citizens of the United States.  If he was penalizing them and trying to extinguish Christianity, don't you think people might object?  There are four churches within a couple of blocks in my home village, and last Sunday the parking lots were all full.

Funny thing, that.

But a little thing like reality doesn't stop Pastor Rodriguez.  We're all going to pay for Obama's sins.  It's all going to start with a "12 point earthquake," he says:

Jehovah will have absolute control over the earth that night.  This is what the 12 point earthquake means-The Presence of Jehovah on earth.  The Lord comes with His book to claim many souls before Jehovah, The Father, for His kingdom that night.

No, what an earthquake means is a shift of tectonic plates along a fault line.

You know, science.

But since a "12 point earthquake" clearly isn't enough chastisement, there's going to be an asteroid impact.  Obama will try in his dastardly fashion to make sure that the asteroid hits Pastor Rodriguez, because he's just that important:

Obama, the President of the United States sent approximately 40 missiles to PR, to try to break the asteroid in the sky, so that it would fall on land (in Puerto Rico), and not in the sea.  On a previous message, Efrain warned Obama to not press those buttons.  He told the Army not to do it. He said: "Do not interfere with Jehovah's plans."

This evil plan will fail, however, because god is screwing around with NASA:

NASA keeps giving dates and trying to justify themselves.  The prophetic letters written by Efrain indicate that The Lord would keep NASA in a state of confusion, bewilderment and agitation, since they chose to not consult with The Lord, and chose to not warn the people when they first received Jehova's warning through Efrain.  They even labeled the message as false, in a press conference in Florida.

Fancy that.

After that, there will be a flood that will stop all of the rivers on Earth, and then a pestilence that will "be worse than all of what came before it."  Then the Rapture.  And then things really go to hell.

Ludwig Ferdinand Schnorr von Carolsfeld, Apocalypse (1831) [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons}

So we're really in for it, and it's all Obama's fault.  Myself, I'm rather looking forward to the whole thing.  The Four Horsepersons of the Apocalypse seem to me a good bit more interesting than Pastor Rodriguez, and being an atheist I'm pretty much fucked anyway, so I'll take my chances.

But as a funny postscript to all of this, there's no such thing as a wacko without one or more equal and opposite wackos, so it comes as no surprise that there are other preachers out there saying that Pastor Rodriguez is a false prophet, and that they know what's really going to happen.  Rodriguez is called a "deceiver" over at Before It's News, and his message labeled as "religious spam" at Church of God News.  But that doesn't mean that the Tribulation isn't going to happen; it just means that he got some of the details wrong.  So he's not god's spokesperson, I am!

No you're not, I am!

No, me!

No, not you, either, it's me!  Me, I tell you!  Meeeeeeeee!

Frankly, I have no problem with all of this infighting.  I'm just going to pop some popcorn and sit back to watch.  After all, the more time the apocalyptoids spend yelling at each other, the less time they'll have to send hate mail to me.

Well, that should take care of your "Bieber Fever."

So San Francisco made it through yesterday without being obliterated.  I'm pleased about that, because San Francisco is a great place and it would suck if it was destroyed by an earthquake even if it is a hotbed of "sexual immortality" (as one of the prophecies of doom called it).

Of course, the same bunch of prophets also called it a "Bowl of Iniquity," which is just funny.  It sounds like the breakfast they serve in hell's deli, doesn't it?  ("Hey, hon, can I have another Bowl of Iniquity, with some milk and sugar?  Thanks.")

But of course, this failure of the Lord to keep his word and smite the hell out of California isn't going to stop the prognosticators of doom from moving on to the next Holy Warning.  In fact, a reader told me we already have one that has cleared the starting gate, and it's a doozy.  Ready?

FEMA has been caught in the act of sending shiploads of plastic coffins and other corpse-transport devices...

... to Puerto Rico...

... because there's going to be an asteroid impact in the Atlantic Ocean...

... causing an enormous, 200-foot-tall tsunami...

... in order to kill everyone at the October 19 Justin Bieber concert in San Juan.

Well.  I certainly can't top that.  And I have to state, for the record, that I can understand why the Lord might want to smite Justin Bieber.  Destroying Puerto Rico in order to do it sounds like it might be a bit of an overreaction, however.  On the other hand, if you read the Old Testament you'll find that this sort of thing happened all the time, with the Lord having a bad morning and smiting the shit out of everyone who happened to be in the vicinity, so I guess there's precedent.

The Lord Works In Mysterious Ways, after all, and if killing everyone in Puerto Rico is his way of dealing with Justin Bieber, then who am I to question it?

So, there you have it.  The next prophecy to look forward to.  Much more creative than a silly old earthquake, don't you think?  And just think!  If it's true, we'll never have to hear "As Long As You Love Me" again.