Slashdot Mirror
"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?
Assuming all the conspiracy theorists can be convinced it's true, at least this means I'll be dead before this idiocy crops up again.
Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
That's just what they want you to think.
Caffeine is my anti-drug!
Duranin - A NWN2 Roleplaying Persistent World
Now we're going to have to deal with a rehash of all of that "You shouldn't call it the Millennium Bug, the new Millennium doesn't start until 1/1/2001, morons" BS...
Does this mean we have to endure another round of shitty movies in 2217?
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
now we are gonna get another terrible movie, and its gonna be called... "2020"
On 2012-12-21, many geeks were about to have sex from the new agey women who believed that it was the last day of the Earth.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
SELL YOUR STOCK SHARES!!! END IS HERE!
No, sorry. Earth is just 6000 thousand year old so there is no prophesy what means no problem... but they still wants your money so give it away and sell your house, car and all property!
Many Christians waiting to be raptured on 2012... Now they have to wait again!
New Economic Perspectives
So now this song will go like this?:
Now I'm [still] waiting for the big boom
And it know where I'm [was] gonna be
The big boom
I'm always getting closer to
The big boom
And it will catch up to me
The big boom
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
Link: http://fusionanomaly.net/2012.html
http://nathanlindsell.blogspot.com/
The original site that the Google translate link is directing to seems to be borked. Does anyone have any other links to throw out?
Mess not in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup.
The Sheeple running around yelling the sky is falling is incorrect.... wow that is the first time that has occurred.
Every 25.8 years? That doesn't seem so spectacular. All we have to do is add 25.8 to the last doomsday and we'll know for certain. Did the last doomsday happen in 1994 or 1986? I don't remember either being particularly bad, except maybe for the music.
Have the past, current and this calculation all taken into account all the calendar changes made throughout history?
from 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
to 45 2F 6E 40 3C DF 10 71 4E 41 DF AA 25 7D 31 3F
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.
Wait a minute, how do you "debunk" a myth or religious belief? The only way to "debunk" it is to wait until Dec 13th and then say, "See, the world didn't end afterall." Even that approach can run into problems with myths and religious beliefs "No, it DID happen, but it was a SPIRITUAL end to the world" etc. etc. This approach is the same as a religious leader "Proving" a scientific theorem based on revelation. These are different structures for argument, folks, and they can't be interchanged that way.
Just because I can hook a shark from a boat, I do no offer to wrestle it in the water.
I bet the guys behind this aren't too happy to hear this.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
For example, on the west panel at the Temple of Inscriptions in Palenque, a section of the text projects into the future to the 80th Calendar Round (CR) 'anniversary' of the famous Palenque ruler K'inich Janaab' Pakal's accession to the throne (Pakal's accession occurred on a Calendar Round date 5 Lamat 1 Mol, at Long Count 9.9.2.4.8 equivalent to 27 July 615 CE).[12] It does this by commencing with Pakal's birthdate 9.8.9.13.0 8 Ajaw 13 Pop (24 March 603 CE) and adding to it the Distance Number 10.11.10.5.8.[13] This calculation arrives at the 80th Calendar Round since his accession, a day that also has a CR date of 5 Lamat 1 Mol, but which lies over 4,000 years in the future from Pakal's time--the day 21 October in the year 4772. The inscription notes that this day would fall eight days after the completion of the 1st piktun [since the creation or zero date of the Long Count system], where the piktun is the next-highest order above the b'ak'tun in the Long Count. If the completion date of that piktun--13 October 4772--were to be written out in Long Count notation, it could be represented as 1.0.0.0.0.0. The 80th CR anniversary date, eight days later, would be 1.0.0.0.0.8 5 Lamat 1 Mol.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoamerican_Long_Count_calendar#2012_and_the_Long_Count
http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
My credit card will be paid off by then making Minimum payments.
has run a lot of dubious programming. This was one of the things they were actually pushing.
Sigh. As if they've never read or understood the verses in Mark 13:31, 32?
There are plenty of other passages to the same effect. They've read them, of course. They just conveniently ignore them.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Damn, I blew off contributing to my 401(k) and kids 529 plans with the whole Mayan calendar apocalypse in mind. Guess I'll have to rethink my (lack of) retirement plans...
When I run out of days on my calendar, I usually just buy a new one. It would certainly make new years parties more interesting if every new year was a potential end of days scenario though.
There at least was one when I was in Japan in 2005...
(Honest to YHVH, that's not a photoshop. I have no idea what it was for, but I was glad when my train started moving again!)
It's a Cyrillic alphabet. It's like all those keys you never push on a calculator.
Clearly, the end is near. And death shall arrive with beepable noses!
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
until they realized they have miscalculated it again, and they find the date to be less than the year 2000. Now that's going to be embarrassing.
There are several lists of those Doomsday predictions, i.e. here
...was that I got halfway through the article before I realized I was viewing it through Google Translate. Yeah, I wasn't paying much attention. And yeah, I had noticed some errors -- but my mind just dismissed them as poor proofreading before publishing. I'm still impressed by how far online translation services have come from the early days of AltaVista Babelfish.
It's a Cyrillic alphabet. It's like all those keys you never push on a calculator.
Maybe they will get George Lucas to direct it and the franchise will implode.
Fixed that for you.
Sigs are for losers
So by now we all (?) know that the Mayans didn't claim anything about the world ending, but did they believe that the rollover of a major calendrical cycle would be a time of great change? Google that for me?
Now they can throw "we are not blowing up anymore" parties.
If every person on Earth predicts a single (different) date as being the end of the world, and one of them ends up being correct - does that mean their prophesy was true? Certainly not. There was no basis for their claim - it should rightly be rejected as arbitrary, even if it happened to coincide with reality.
Although at that point - the end of the world - epistemology is probably not going to be your biggest concern. I'll refer you to the rules of Zombieland for further guidance.
It's not exactly right to say it's like the end of a year calendar. But the Western/Roman date system does have a similar date: January 1, 0 AD. The Mayan calendar was about predicting the end of an age, of an era, not the world. If memory serves, the Mayans believed that there were 5 or 6 periods of ~25,000 from "the beginning" to "the end" and I think 2012 (or whatever) is meant to be the beginning of the 4th or 5th.
Even if you wanted to go out on the crazy limb and assign some sort of mystical significance to 12-21-2012, it prolly would be something equivalent to the birth of Christ or founding of Islam or the 10 Commandments or whatever that other calendars have that really weren't a big deal to most people in the world at the time.
Or maybe the Rapture'll happen. That'd be kinda funny.
The reason for all the hoopla about 2012, is that in the Maya Calendar, the last creation ended on a 13th Baktun. The lunatics suppose that since the last creation ended on a 13th Baktun, the Maya supposed that this creation would also end after 13 Baktuns, but there is no evidence that the Maya had any such beliefs. There is a date on the West Panel of the Temple of Inscriptions from Palenque that refers to an anniversary of the crowning of the king, Pacal, that makes it quite obvious that the Maya believed that there was a 14th through 20th Baktun.
So, in summary, these guys are wrong about the new correlation, and all the 2012 nutjobs are wrong about even the Maya believing that 2012 was the end of this creation. For more information, see the presentation on the FAMSI (Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies) web site by Mark Van Stone that fully details what is known and what is true about Maya beliefs about 2012. http://www.famsi.org/research/vanstone/2012/index.html
There's always going to be some date in the future that some group of people think is going to be the end of time. When that date passes, they will find some way to reconcile it and come up with a new date. Or they will just be vague about it and claim "well we are in the end times now, thats why all these bad things are happening in the world".
I just wish the end would come now, suddenly, on a date of no importance or significance to anyone, and in a way completely unlike any prophesied before; I wish it would happen so completely unambiguously unlike anything ever imagined that it would put to end every stupid belief surrounding every one of those doomsday scenarios.
Thats the only true end of times: the one that proves everybody wrong.
It should happen right about.. now... *
-- Senior Software Engineer, Attorney appearance services, locallawyerapp.com.
So much for applying for tons of credit cards and not having to pay them off. I was planning to live out my last couple years like a King!
The sooner the loonies panic, the sooner they will commit ceremonial suicide! This was our unique chance to finally get rid of them! We were so close! And you had to extend it to 2220?? :(
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
There have been a lot of different groups that have determined the end of the world, in the past tense.
Think of those idiots who drink poisened cool-aid, expect to fly off on a comet, or sell off all their possessions expecting to spend all their money enjoying themselves before things go boom. Many religious groups still exist that were based on the end of the world predictions that have passed.
I still don't understand why a dead religion (I haven't heard of any practicing aztecs, actively ripping out the hearts of thousands at a time) should be given such a promanent place in the current belief systems. If you believe in this disaster prediction, then you obviously place more belief in the aztec gods than any of the current crop, and you should start ripping out hearts.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
"Hitchens: Christianity is a fraud if it’s not literally true
If the story of Jesus Christ isn't literally true, then Christianity is a fraud that promotes "a positively wicked doctrine," conservative writer Christopher Hitchens told Fox & Friends Monday morning.
Hitchens, an avowed atheist whose 2007 book God is Not Great attempts to divorce conservatism from religious teachings, discussed the role of religion in American society in the wake of a recent study (PDF) that shows the number of Americans who claim no religious affiliation has roughly doubled in the past two decades, from 8.2 percent in 1990 to 15 percent in 2008.
more at...
http://rawstory.com/2009/10/hitchens-christianity-fraud/
My world comes to an end on April 15th every year!
They've read them, of course. They just conveniently ignore them.
Well, why should that part of the bible be any different?
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
The "death of Geocities" discussion is three stories over.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
This is all we need, a conspiracy about a conspiracy.
You say that as if they conveniently ignore the entire Bible. They don't, quite... 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.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
If you go by current fossil records, Modern man has seen 4 such cycles, and still managed to advance technology in a roughly exponential trend throughout history.
nothing to see here, move along!
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
WTF are we all going to do???!!!!!
..of the gigantic clock someone is building, that should work for 10,000 years. Maybe we should engrave a manual in that thing, that when it is done, the world does not end, but you have to rewind it.
... the robots won't go berserk for at least another 24 hours.
I've lost all my marbles except one & It's fun to test angular & centripetal acceleration in my skull
I was so looking forward to not being pulled out of retirement to fix the UNIX Y2038 problem due to the world having been destroyed 26 years earlier. Oh well guess I'd better start printing those business cards, since I'm pretty sure Congress was also banking on the world ending in 2012 to solve their Social Security problem...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Hmm, you say that as if you think none of them do. :(
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
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.
Would that include the first page, which says "To my darling Candy. All characters portrayed within this book are fictitious and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental"?
This means I'll have to wait until 2038 when Linux time ends? Gonna be a bit harder to convince the chix with the crystals on that one. Would everyone please help curtail the x64 transition until then?
K'thx!
Imagination drew in bold strokes, instantly serving hopes and fears, while knowledge advanced by slow increments...
The only science here is bullshit.
They can't even get basic facts right. The so-called "alignment" is 6 degrees off, and happens twice a year.
The last rollover of a b'akt'un cycle was in 1618. Did anybody notice?
...laura
I guess the gov't and banks from Mexico will have to pay retired mayan sunstone engineers trillions of cocoa seeds to fix the B13 bug.
Thats when you really panic! aaaaarghhh!! 2012 has to be real now! If only they just kept saying it was 2012! They've doomed us all!!
This means Spricket24 is going to have to give back her Emmy.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
So this is the end of the end of the world as we know it?
Now we're going to have to listen to this nonsense for another 12 years.
It will happen the day after I win the 100 million dollar jackpot in the lottery. That is why I don't play the lotto. I am saving the world and you should all appreciate me for it.
If there is anyone out there that is interested in ending the world, feel free to send me the ticket that is guaranteed to win and there you go.
As I see it, whenever a calendar marks the changing of an age and in particular the Mayan calendar which, make no mistake these stone agers knew their mathematics, I take pause.
Secondly, I find it odd, all of a sudden now, after what 200 years of studying this calendar someone with "never before seen insight into Mayan calendar mathematics and observational astronomy" says "Woops, everyone goofed its actually XXXX."
That is sort of like myself declaring, well...all of you guys thought Octover 27th was tomorrow, but I am smarter than you all, and everyone in the last 200 years that looked at the problem, and I say its 200 years from now.
The mathematics has been beaten like a dead horse, and indeed the age ends on December 21st on the solstice marker.
Now, I am not so sure anything dire is going to happen, but I do believe at the end of any age, its closing represents a judgement on the future path time will proceed.
Be it good or bad, I hope humanity gets exactly what it deserves.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
Wait why are we listening to Mayans again? The world already did end for them, a long long time ago. It seems that their prediction (if it even was one) was way optimistic.
Actually, I'd like to explain a bit more in depth on that. It's an interesting story.
The Passover matzah is unleavened. It represents the bread which the Israelites took with them when they fled Egypt; in their haste they had no time to wait for bread to rise. Thus, unleavened bread.
The wine is an icon of the blood which was sprinkled on the doorposts of Israelite homes so that the angel of death would pass over their homes and spare their first-born sons when the sons of the Egyptians were killed. It was sprinkled in three places, on either side and above the doorframe.
The custom was for the youngest at the meal to sit next to the teacher or elder (who would be at the head of the table, wherever that was). The youngest would ask what each symbol meant, and the elder would explain it. This was to commemorate the Jews' escape from Egypt.
Instead of following the standard script, Jesus said the bread was his body and the wine his blood. Then he completely changed the focus by saying they were to do it in remembrance of him – not the escape from Egypt! No doubt this caused a good deal of puzzlement in everyone present...
Then Jesus was eventually crucified, and the blood on the cross matched up with blood on either side and above the doorway in the original plague in Egypt – tying the whole thing together and showing that it was a prophetic sign of Christ from the beginning.
Even if you don't believe it, and I have no doubt you don't (and I'm not trying to convince anyone), it's a fascinating marriage between Judaism and Christianity. All the original Christians were Jews, remember.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
If it happens every 25.800 years then it seems like no big deal to me, and obviously is not the end of the world. Why is everybody making such a big deal if it happens about every quarter century?
(If you mod this down there must be a post in reply that explains how they would differentiate 25.800 (as 25800) from 25.800 (as 25.800 [25 and 800 thousandths - precision is significant] )
Please stop fucking with the number system. I know this event happens every 25800 years not every 25.800 years. The decimal can only be used between the ones and the tenths place in a decimal number system, unless scientific or engineering notation is used (but those generally are only used by those who comprehend significant figures).
There is no way to justify writing 25800 as 25.800. None.
Oh hee hee ha ha gasp you're so funny. Really, let me catch my breath...
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
If we're lucky, they'll re-edit and wait another couple hundred years to release it.
Because those passage are about as bunk as the mayan end-of-the-word-in-2012, or about as bunk as Thor's legend, or whatever sumerian stuff or the impregnation as a shower of coin by Zeus (or whatever it was). Your bible is about as much a myth as the rest. the only difference is a lot more people believe in the myth. That does not make it more right.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Up
The New Age spiritually aware around the world are running up against the end of the Mayan Long Count Calendar. Mayan date 12.19.19.17.19 will occur on December 20, 2012, followed by the start of the fourteenth cycle, 13.0.0.0.0, on December 21st.
The event was first flagged by megalith scientist Terence McKenna. The end of the thirteenth cycle would break many megalith calculations — which conventionally use only the last four numbers to save on standing stones — with fears of spiritual collapse, disruption of ley lines, Ben Goldacre driving the chiropractors back into the sea and the return of the great god Quetzalcoatl and the consequent destruction of all life on earth.
Megalith programmers from 4000 years ago are being dredged up from peat bogs and pressed into service to get the henges updated to handle the turnover in the date. “It could be worse,” said one. “I could still be programming COBOL.”
Sceptics may choose the Winter Solstice on December 22nd (13.0.0.0.1) to attack, to take advantage of weakened qi. In case vital services are temporarily cut off, spiritually aware persons should stock up on crystals, copies of Sun Signs, a duly blessed tarot deck and other essentials. “They should get as well a suitable selection of blessed Hopi ear candles,” said Y2012 consultant Ravenwoo Granola, DD, 31, Ph.D (Univ. P.T. Barnum Mail-Order), “unicorn posters, holistic medicines, Silver RavenWolf books, purple clothing, protective pentacles — earrings for the ladies, pendants for the gents — make sure the house is absolutely robust in feng shui, your energetic vibrations are aligned and your Eostre rituals are up to date and keep only homeopathic quantities of money around. I’ll be happy to take on the danger of handling the rest. Here’s a price list. Everyfink for the spiritual survivalist.”
Others dismiss the problem. Sandra Noble of the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies considers the Y2012 problem “a complete fabrication and a chance for a lot of people to cash in.” However, Y2012 consultants deride “2012-deniers” for having their heads in the sand as to the vast and overwhelming spiritual importance to humanity of keeping their consultancies rolling.
Illustration: Blue screen of Stonehenge.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
According to Wikipedia at least:
"Progress in decipherment continues at a rapid pace today, and it is generally agreed by scholars that over 90 percent of the Maya texts can now be read with reasonable accuracy."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_script
Its not as evolved as our understanding of Egyptian perhaps but its well on its way. As far as I recall the Mayan languages spoken by present day Maya have not changed a lot either and thus would be of substantial help in deciphering the scripts.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
The actual date is December 21st 2013. The 2012 thing is just a little funny.
Those crazy Mayans!
Does anyone know Dutch and have the time to submit better translations?
better? >:( teh xlashun iz jus fien kthxbai
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
The Mayans have no idea of scale, pah! cycles of only 3000 odd years!
The Abrahamic religions with their piddling 6-8000 year timescales are also damn narrow thinkers.
Now, according to the Hindu teachers we're in Kali Yuga. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kali_Yuga
This is the last of 4 cycles, the one of dissolution and degeneration. (They've got the mood of the time right.)
Hurry and get your things in order! There's only some 427000 years or so left!
I admire a belief system that has a long view of history...still nowhere near geological timescales though.
That gives us room for 200+ years of suck cubs baseball.
I don't want all you slashdotters debunking the one thing I know about how to end a drought if you happen to have a virgin and a volcano handy.
They've read them, of course. They just conveniently ignore them.
So, err, which Mayan document d'ya figure contains that passage?
(...and how does a gross generalization become "informative", anyway?)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
And here I thought we would have to come up with a completely new, and totally different way to insist the world would end after it completely fails to do so by January 1st, 2013. I guess this means we will be able to keep right on pretending the Mayans knew something about the future, despite the shear silliness of such a notion. If they knew so much, how come they couldn't manage to prevent their own destruction? More importantly, even if this is true, has it occurred to anyone that the reason their calendar only runs until... whenever... is that they never thought the code would still be around so far on down the line? (Like our Y2K thing) Just some food for thought. ~Hal
Tonight were gonna party like its 2219?
The reason that everyone got so excited about the Mayan end-date is that it is a major culture's doomsday prediction that is testable in our lifetime. In the Jewish tradition, the messiah is supposed to come in the year 6000 AM and rule for another thousand years until the year 7000. Thus the world lives for a cosmic week ending with a sort of cosmic sabbath of messianic reign. Now that would be a nice prediction to test, unfortunately the year 6000 in the Jewish calendar is about 2240 AD. So just like all the people before us, we won't be able to see whether anything happens or not. Here we had a prediction that was to mature in a couple of years, and these spoil sports had to ruin our fun. Of course doomsday predictions are only fun when they don't come true, so seeing when the ice caps finally melt or dollar collapses doesn't have much of a pay off when you're eventually right.
We don't ignore them, we address them. If you would sit down and listen long enough for a knowledgeable Christian to explain these "contradictions" then you would see they're not actually contradictions at all.
when the universe ends, Tipler's Omega Point proves that we will feel just like nothing happened =)
Sounds like modern society is still ahead -- it is more appropriate to worship something that has no more hell in it, right?
Don't blame me -- I voted for Roslin.
Yeah, sure, the current Mayans probably don't use the old hieroglyphics. But even so, having a grammar and vocabulary for the language so you know how things fit together helps immensely, compared to having to infer them from the hieroglyphs. Still, that Spanish guy shouldn't have burned the books.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Darn, I guess I have to come out of my early retirement, at age 35.
They'll still being going on about this non-sense for years. I was looking forward to nothing happening, so in 2013 they could finally shut up.
Not ends, CYCLES. Get the headline right, please.
Not that I believe any of this nonsense, but going by their reckoning the end of the last cycle would have been at around 23,800 BC or thereabouts. Back then, what were our ancestors doing? The invention of agriculture would still be about 15,000 years in the future. All humans at the time were living in hunter-gatherer tribes. History itself would not formally begin for another 20,000 years, when the Sumerians invented cuneiform. The time when humans have "managed to advance technology in a roughly exponential trend throughout history" only seems to have begun at around that same time, 6000 years ago, less than a quarter of the supposed length of a cycle. The remaining three quarters of the present cycle, humanity's most advanced technology consisted of stone tools. Humans of the cycles before that were pretty much the same. There are many reasons to disbelieve this nonsense about doomsday, but humanity's supposed progress is not one of them.
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
The smugly self-satisfied refutations that sound just different enough to prove they're not just copying each other but should have been paying enough attention to each other so that their sheer numbers didn't make it look so much like they cared or at least coveted the loonies' public spotlight, now outnumber the loonies paying enough attention to smugly copying each other in the public spotlight so their stories differ just enough so that there is no single satisfactory refutation from which to sheer some coveted attention.
As for the Maya people, I'll bet most of the 7 million of them fully expect to still be here in 2013. I suspect of the few that even notice the scuedopsientific jircle cerk going on around them, at least a few secretly hope "their" predictions come true for much of the rest of us. Even though there are none. Predictions, that is, not Maya. There's a passle of them. Maya, not predictions.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Comment removed based on user account deletion
In the beginning was Void. And a hand moved upon the face of the system monitor, writing
* 3D0G
and the command thus passed from monitor to Basic, and lo, the prompt was
]
And St. Woz saw this, and was pleased. The Fallen One, the Other Steve, was not so pleased, and what's new? But he hacketh not, so we careth not.
We are now (2009) exactly halfway between the Creation Event (1979) and the end of the Apple Calendar (2039) as has always been displayed upon my sacred terminal of IIgs and II's before it. As it is written, so let it be refreshed.
Scoff not, young ones, for what sort of entity might require you summon him with the command 3D0G, which is very nearly G0DS backwards? And why backwards if not for him to be able to read it from The Other Side?
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
maybe this whole Mayan Calendar thing is one long, wicked practical joke on the rest of the world? Cool!
Impetuous! Homeric!
That means I do have to care about my retirement plans after all?!? oh sh..!
The Mayan civilization ended around 1000 years ago. They already had their doomsday. So why are we worrying about their calendar?
Go buy a new one ...
While you are at it, buy one for next year too; saves stress ...
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
Now, I haven't seen a good crucifixion lately, but I imagine the blood on a cross is a little more than a "sprinkle" of blood on a doorframe.
Everyone here knows that the world will end on 19 January 2038.
numerous more researches were done and it was found out that it ended a few years earlier than 2012.
Read radical news here
Eh? What part of "I already posted the reference" do I need to spell out for you?
Actually, I am one of those guys who assumes that everybody (probably at least 99.9% of them) have at least heard of the Bible.
And if they haven't, http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Mark+13:31,+32.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Well, all the original Christians were – Peter was eventually given the revelation that Gentiles were to be included, and Paul later specifically devoted his ministry to the Gentiles, but before that they were all Jews.
It's fair to include the early Gentile converts in the phrase "original" Christians, but I was referring to even before that.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Yes, well, it wasn't exactly a sprinkle if you're thinking of the little finger-flick they do when baptizing babies... it was more of a drenched hyssop branch being swatted against the sides and lintel of the doorway.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Wine is never a symbol of blood in Judaism. It is always a symbol of joy and happiness. We spill drops of wine while reading the names of the ten plagues, not because blood was spilled during them, but because our happiness is diminished knowing that people had to die for us to get our freedom. The "blood sprinkled on the doorposts" is partially represented by the shank bone on the Sedar plate (lamb sacrifice which we no longer do) and partially by the mezuzahs on our doorposts.
The idea that wine = blood in Judaism comes from Christian groups (to whom wine did represent the blood of Christ) and from the blood libels where Jews were accused of kidnapping kids, slaughtering them, and turning their blood into their (the Jews') wine. Of course, this is an outright lie. The truth of the matter is that Judaism forbids consuming blood. That is why kosher meat is salted and soaked (to remove any blood in it).
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Just goes to show, no matter how big you make your counter, no matter how completely out of spec it would have to be for that counter to roll over, somebody will, eventually, manage to roll it over.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
... so I have to wait 111 years before getting laid?
Better stock up on the Viagra.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Thanks for the correction. So basically Jesus totally re-appropriated the symbolism of wine and said it represented his blood.
Reading the wiki on "Passover" further, there were 4 cups of wine, one of which represented the Exodus, which is the closest I can come to claiming my statement was anywhere close to being correct. The other three were various blessings and prayers.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
regarding 2012 ending the world doesn't really believe the world is going to end.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
They NEVER shut up. 2 seconds after midnight on 1/1/13, they will start going on about the next end of the world.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
For one cycle to begin, another ends.
For example, every 12/31 the year ends.
SO yes, this is an end. Just like 12/31 marks the end of every year.
I would also argue that it ends because this means it will never be brought up again.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The arguments posed in this thread are amusing at best, confused at worst. Perhaps the thing we need to learn collectively might be that our culture's perceptions on ourselves, the world and the universe are flawed. Only in the culture that has emerged in the past one hundred years do we consider 'civilized' society one where it's acceptable to manufacture consent, to use the science of psychology against each other in marketing and media, that war and violence are acceptable ways of conflict resolution. Only in this culture do we think that 'it's someone else's problem, they can deal with it' is acceptable. This separation of selves may have been necessary, but it's up to each one of us to do the internal defragmentation and recoding of our own 'programs'.
2220? Seriously, anyone who has watched the fast pace of evolution in computer technology should be able to step back and see the parallel ratcheting up in pace in other fields, like pharmaceuticals, finance, space exploration and environmental studies. Everything is on a schedule. Anyone who can't see this is likely in denial. There's certainly a lot of fear spread about the Long Count date.
I don't know, but it seems to me that the selfishness, greed and lack of regard for the environment we inhabit is something that cannot be sustained by the planet, and even society in general. The manipulation and disenfranchisement of the Other has reached epic proportions that have never been seen before in all of history. We are literally tearing each other apart. And people have come to believe that Nature is flawed, forgetting that humans are an intrinsic part of nature. Ridiculous ideas like putting mirrors in space to reflect light from the sun away from earth only serve to illuminate the collective darkness some seem to want to sustain. The tipping point we stand at today is one of responsibility. What will we chose to not stand for? Fate is something we each hold in our own hands.
The Mayans weren't counting days. They were counting something different. That idea is going to be foreign to anyone who thinks days are nothing but a linear sequence. I think anyone will agree that today's Gregorian calendar is more of a financial calendar. I see the Mayan's tzol'kin as more of a space-weather prediction system. Just because we're only now discovering the evidential existence of space weather doesn't mean that ancient civilizations didn't have their own unique ways and frames of understanding these concepts.
One of the best introductions I've found to the Mayan Calendars is Ian Xel Lungold's presentation called The Mayan Calendar Comes North.
http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-8689261981090121097
The most important thing any seeker can remember, whether they be a mystic or informational, is that too many journalists screw up the story. The only way to cut through the chaff is to feel one's way forwards.
Neutiquam erro
Also ignored is the context. Jesus was talking within the lifetimes of the original disciples.
In order to prevent the world from ever ending, I have started a monastery whose monks so purpose is to say they world will end withing the next second.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
No, that's fairly ambiguous; it's not clear whether he was referring to his disciples, his followers in general (which would include present-day Christians), the Jewish race, or the nation Israel.
Obviously the first option would be out since they're all dead... unless you say that Paul's revelation (from which we get the book of Revelation) in which he saw the end times was the fulfillment of that prophecy, which is an entirely plausible explanation.
But I did figure someone would bring that up eventually... glad to see you at least knew the context.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
In order to prevent the world from ever ending, I have started a monastery whose monks so purpose is to say they world will end withing the next second.
Cute... but that won't prevent anything. Making a prediction doesn't mean you know; that's only borne out by the prediction coming about. The Bible merely says you don't know. Of course if you make enough predictions you might eventually be correct, but you obviously didn't know, because in prophecy, you don't even get three strikes... one bad swing and you're out.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
... when the Leafs win the Cup.
Are so disappointed. We were so looking forward to the end of the world!
Shit, you mean I do need a retirement plan after all?
Loose lips lose spit.