[Medium FormatPro]

I survived the viet nam war, a chopper crash, hit by a car on my bicycle, Mt. St. Helens

Ironically survived Mt St Helens as well; from less than 10km away. Even to people in the area that were familiar with the newer activities of the volcano at the time - to many it sincerely looked as though the area got nuked

[Tom S.]

The HAB Theory

Excellent book. I remember reading it about 30+ years ago. Sure made me wonder.

[riff]

To whom it may concern, I will buy your camera gear for dirt cheap since the world ends soon, have a few extra bux to enjoy the little time remaining.

[MRRiley]

Just posting these to show how the counting system worked...

Youtu.be

Youtu.be

Youtu.be

Youtu.be

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Last edited by MRRiley; 12-03-2012 at 10:40 AM.

[Ratmagiclady]

Hee. Well, all this fuss about the Great Age is kind of what you get when people kind of project Christian eschatology onto ...well, a long-count calendar. The actual Mayans aren't predicting a cataclysmic end: it basically just marks the changing of an era, (Mind you, I'm fairly concerned there's rough times coming on a few counts, but that's almost entirely very predictable. You know, stuff people are in science denial about.

But I guess I can still joke, "Only 19 shopping days left till Ragnarok."

Just to mix the metaphors. If this was what those Norse guys were talking about, we should already be in Fimbulwinter.

Anyway, about the scariest these prophecies get is the notion that people's machines and animals will turn against them, but whoever said that doesn't seem to have a lot of currency with the Mayan people, either.

[Raffwal]

Man has a perverse need for predictions of the end of the world. In my 40+ years there's been so many ways for the mankind to perish coming. Nuclear war, HIV/AIDS, Ebola, climate warming, new ice age, Nibiru, Mayan end of the world, pollution... Pick your poison.

And yes - we ARE all going to die! But in most cases in less dramatic ways.

[condor27596]

I'm making a 2013 calendar of my daughter's photos so the world can't end it won't match up

I do wish I had gotten it together a bit better and made one for 2012, that ended on 12/21 or 12 /12 lol

[normhead]

Always be suspicious when some one who had no hand in creating something tells you they know what it means. This applies to books taken as sacred as well.

[Eulogy]

As Tweeted by Neil DeGrasse Tyson:

Get Rich Quick Scheme:
Can't convince your friends that the world isn't going to end on Dec. 22nd? Offer to take all their unneeded wealth.

[Nesster]

I thought it had more to do with something like this...
Technological singularity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Vernor Vinge on the Singularity
Live from New York: The Singularity Summit : EnlightenNext: The Magazine for Evolutionaries


What I do know is on that date I leave behind my youth and enter the age of Man

[Ratmagiclady]

Man has a perverse need for predictions of the end of the world. In my 40+ years there's been so many ways for the mankind to perish coming. Nuclear war, HIV/AIDS, Ebola, climate warming, new ice age, Nibiru, Mayan end of the world, pollution... Pick your poison.

And yes - we ARE all going to die! But in most cases in less dramatic ways.

I don't know if that's so much about 'Man' as certain ways of thinking/believing about life/a life. I do think the notion of sudden/cataclysmic ends is really about the fact that some people just don't think they're part of the world, and therefore project certain notions of it having to end with them onto both the whole planet and... well, lots of things.


Personally, I expect to be back. And, yes, this to be here going on as we left it.

That's what keeps *me* up some nights, under the circumstances.


Believe it or not, what *I* think I observe is that people have this 'end of the world' fixation cause it's *easier.*


But that ain't the people who name the days a few thousand years in advance. That's the people who fear ends of the world and can't act like something counts past the next fiscal quarter or election. Personally, I've lived too much of my life in what's been over the years, *for* years, a near-constant anxiety attack. Just living ever day with the whole nervous system screaming, 'You're dying soon.'

Comes a point, I think, when it's not an 'end' you need to 'prophesy' or deny.

Sure ain't any substitute for a future.

We gonna get to that?

This Solstice I'll keep my part of the vigil as always, probably with insufferable quantities of zombie-apocalypse jokes, knowing a few of my friends, but I'll leave the katana at home and be like, "Give me another cup of wassail or give me bangbang. JUst in case anyone smells overly dead. You'll know. "


I think that's what the zombie thing even is. Yeah, you can safely geek out about it, but I think we got more fear than life right now. Things don't have to get Hollywood for *that* to be a problem, I assure you.

[RoxnDox]

I will take this opportunity to remind you of Y2K.

Which was a big non-event because a lot of programmers rewrote a lot of code to use 4-digit years internally rather than relying on an assumed "19" in front of a two-digit year... But people were freaking out about it because of the scare and the millennial fever anyways, so the non-event is non-news

Jim (one of those programmers)

[Ratmagiclady]

Which was a big non-event because a lot of programmers rewrote a lot of code to use 4-digit years internally rather than relying on an assumed "19" in front of a two-digit year... But people were freaking out about it because of the scare and the millennial fever anyways, so the non-event is non-news

Jim (one of those programmers)

Yeah, people like to pretend it was all a big scare for nothing. Actually, it was a big scare about a real problem that a lot of people actually *did* something about.

It's a bit like the ozone hole, or DDT, y'know,


It's not to say the corporate media wasn't flogging it for ratings till well after "Nobody knows how this stuff works anymore!' led to some of the people they'd obsoleted and discriminated against climbing down off the tractors, "Years of budget cuts and a legacy system, eh? Still using FORTRAN? I know that."


Anyway, after this Solstice I think we're fresh out of 'ends of the world' for a while. Let's dance.

You Tube

You Tube

[Racer X 69]

Always be suspicious when some one who had no hand in creating something tells you they know what it means. This applies to books taken as sacred as well.

[Raffwal]

Well, how about the year 2038? Unix time runs out and I bet some systems will be still built upon Unix at that time. It will be the Y2k end of the world again! No, wait...