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"2012" a Miscalculation; Actual Calendar Ends 2220
boombaard writes "News is spreading quickly here that scientists writing in a popular science periodical (Dutch) have debunked the 2012 date (google translation linked) featuring so prominently in doomsday predictions/speculation across the web.
On 2012-12-21, the sun will appear where you would normally be able to see the 'galactic equator' of the Milky Way; an occurrence deemed special because it happens 'only' once every 25.800 years, on the winter solstice. However, even if you ignore the fact that there is no actual galactic equator, just an observed one, and that the visual effect is pretty much the same for an entire decade surrounding that date, there are major problems with the way the Maya Calendar is being read by doomsday prophets." I wonder what Amazon's return policy on a box full of 3 doomsday wolves shirts is?
The Mayans were amateurs when it comes to doomsday calendars. We have a doomsday once every 365 days (except on leap years) when our calendar hits December 31.
Oh. Wait. It's not doomsday? It's just the end of the calendar cycle? Oh. Maybe the Mayan calendar's ending is the same thing and not the end of the world...
Yeah.
major problems with the way the Maya Calendar is being read by doomsday prophets
When someone reads the Mayan Calendar and predicts the end of times... I don't think the date is the most important detail they got wrong.
Your post is incredibly relevant considering that the Mayan calendar simply starts over at that time rather than predicting the end. The Apocalyptic prediction from the calendar was simply speculation that arose from not knowing the language. There's not exactly a Mayan Rosetta Stone so even all that we know about the language is still premature.
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Yup. It's the Mayan Y2K bug. Good thing their calendar is based on mechanical circles. People discussing a 2012 apocalypse are discussing where a circle begins and ends.
District 9 was good this year!
...and...uh...
So was...um...
Well, District 9 was good this year.
Caffeine is my anti-drug!
Duranin - A NWN2 Roleplaying Persistent World
they usually have a few passages that they conveniently claim to mean something that they don't really, then they repeat those parts over and over to drown out anyone who contradicts them.
Almost everyone who calls themselves a "Christian" today does exactly this. They ignore all the contradictions, God-driven violence and slavery in the Old Testament, they ignore that Jesus said not one jot of the law would pass away, they ignore the prohibiition on divorce and remarriage, they ignore the contradictory accounts of the resurrection, they ignore Jesus' claim to have come to put the world to the sword...
The bits they don't ignore entirely they interpret bizarrely, typically dropping the Jewish context and inserting thier own fantasies.
It is unfortunately extremely difficult for people like this to even see the words on the page in front of them and interpret them as they would an ordinary text, which is all it is. The act of reading gets replaced by the act of interpretation, so that it is almost impossible for the person so aflicted to so much as consider the possibility that the words might have other meanings than the interpretation they are comfortable with.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
Most modern societies also worship corn - they just process the hell out of it first.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
Go to your local Walmart and count how many products contain "high fructose corn syrup"
Now who's the corn-worshiping culture?
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Long story short, mods are pricks.
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