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Author Topic:   Calendar ends in 2012 - Oh Noes!!
Stile
Member
Posts: 4295
From: Ontario, Canada
Joined: 12-02-2004


(1)
Message 1 of 20 (534976)
11-12-2009 9:15 AM


Personally, I think this event is about as interesting as how every calendar I've ever owned also ended... every year. Seems like the Mayans just didn't have room to add on their equivalent of "January" to the end to show it just starts over. Instead of thinking this is the end of the world, we should really be planning one of the largest New Year's Eve parties the planet has ever seen.
But, apparently there exists no shortage of quacks who think that a group of people unable to forsee their own depleting resources were somehow able to predict the end of the entire world.
Losers.
I do admit, however, that the movie looks cool.
Edited by Stile, : Those spelling and grammar errors didn't exist when I proofread before posting. It's a conspiracy to ruin my posts!!

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Hyroglyphx
Inactive Member


(1)
Message 2 of 20 (534998)
11-12-2009 10:31 AM


I think the movie looks like a way overdone apocalyptic script. And the whole 2012 doomsday scenario is just as silly as EVERY other doomsday prophecy that never came to pass.
What was that one at the turn of the century, Y2K?

"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." --John Adams

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Stile
Member
Posts: 4295
From: Ontario, Canada
Joined: 12-02-2004


Message 3 of 20 (535001)
11-12-2009 10:45 AM
Reply to: Message 2 by Hyroglyphx
11-12-2009 10:31 AM


Another Crazie, another yawn.
Hyroglyphx writes:
What was that one at the turn of the century...?
Exactly.
And to any of those silly crazies who actually think "doomsday" when they wonder why the Mayans created a calendar so far into the future...
...it seems like a great way to reduce the inefficiencies of creating new calendars every year. Especially when one of the most popular forms of communicating such information is to carve it into rock!
Can you imagine having to re-carve 100's of new calendars every year? It would be non-stop work!

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tsig
Member (Idle past 2909 days)
Posts: 738
From: USA
Joined: 04-09-2004


Message 4 of 20 (535104)
11-12-2009 9:06 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by Stile
11-12-2009 9:15 AM


Map=/=territory
Since calendars are a human invention I don't see why we should think that an arbitrary string of numbers can influence the real world.
The map is not the territory.

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Iblis
Member (Idle past 3896 days)
Posts: 663
Joined: 11-17-2005


Message 5 of 20 (535121)
11-13-2009 12:27 AM


it's a trick
There's a lot of misdirection involved in this meme. The Mayan calendar doesn't actually end, anymore than the Gregorian one does.
By its linear nature, the Long Count was capable of being extended to refer to any date far into the future (or past).
Maya calendar - Wikipedia
So it really is a lot like the turn of the century, only without even the excuse of a computer bug to rile people up with.
Misinterpretation of the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar is the basis for a New Age belief that a cataclysm will take place on December 21, 2012. December 20, 2012 is simply the last day of the 13th b'ak'tun, which began September 18, 1618 (1,728,000 days from the beginning of the calendar).
Maya calendar - Wikipedia
When you look at what the actual Mayas would predict or expect for such a period end, it isn't meteors and space brothers, either
The completion of significant calendar cycles ("period endings"), such as a k'atun-cycle, were often marked by the erection and dedication of specific monuments (mostly stela inscriptions, but sometimes twin-pyramid complexes such as those in Tikal and Yaxha), commemorating the completion, accompanied by dedicatory ceremonies.
Maya calendar - Wikipedia
There is indeed a Maya concept of cyclical creation and destruction of worlds, but it's on a much larger scale. The concept of 20 b'ak'tuns, for example, is just another marker on the calendar of the existing world.
I'm not going to yammer on about what's really going on here; but I will point out that the person who has stepped up to promulgate the idea is Terrence McKenna, and he didn't start off by talking about the Mayans at all, he just co-opted them at the last minute.
"Timewave zero" is a numerological formula that purports to calculate the ebb and flow of "novelty", defined as increase in the universe's interconnectedness, or organised complexity,[58] over time. According to Terence McKenna, who conceived the idea over several years in the early-mid 1970s while using psilocybin mushrooms and DMT, the universe has a teleological attractor at the end of time that increases interconnectedness, eventually reaching a singularity of infinite complexity in 2012, at which point anything and everything imaginable will occur instantaneously.[58]
McKenna expressed "novelty" in a computer program, which purportedly produces a waveform known as timewave zero or the timewave. Based on McKenna's interpretation of the King Wen sequence of the I Ching,[59] the graph appears to show great periods of novelty corresponding with major shifts in humanity's biological and cultural evolution. He believed the events of any given time are recursively related to the events of other times, and chose the atomic bombing of Hiroshima as the basis for calculating his end date in November 2012. When he later discovered this date's proximity to the end of the 13th baktun on the Maya calendar, he revised his hypothesis so that the two dates matched.[60]
The first edition of The Invisible Landscape refers to 2012 (as the year, not a specific day) only twice. McKenna originally considered it an incidental observation that his and Jos Argelles dates matched, a sign of the end date "being programmed into our unconscious". It was only in 1983, with the publication of Sharer's revised table of date correlations in the 4th edition of Morley's The Ancient Maya, that each became convinced that December 21, 2012 had significant meaning. McKenna subsequently peppered this specific date throughout the second, 1993 edition of The Invisible Landscape.[32]
2012 phenomenon - Wikipedia
Edited by Iblis, : softened language

  
hooah212002
Member (Idle past 802 days)
Posts: 3193
Joined: 08-12-2009


Message 6 of 20 (535124)
11-13-2009 1:32 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by Stile
11-12-2009 9:15 AM


What worries me the most are the amount of fundies who are hellbent on revelations coming true that they may just MAKE it happen.

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Larni
Member (Idle past 164 days)
Posts: 4000
From: Liverpool
Joined: 09-16-2005


(1)
Message 7 of 20 (535141)
11-13-2009 4:50 AM
Reply to: Message 6 by hooah212002
11-13-2009 1:32 AM


What worries me the most are the amount of fundies who are hellbent on revelations coming true that they may just MAKE it happen.
Or we could get lucky and they could suicide quietly in an out of the way cult headquarters.
As long as they are all 18, where's the beef?

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iano
Member (Idle past 1941 days)
Posts: 6165
From: Co. Wicklow, Ireland.
Joined: 07-27-2005


(1)
Message 8 of 20 (535142)
11-13-2009 4:53 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by Stile
11-12-2009 9:15 AM


Stile writes:
But, apparently there exists no shortage of quacks who think that a group of people unable to forsee their own depleting resources were somehow able to predict the end of the entire world.
Not all that much different than another group of people who are able to foresee their own depleting resources, yet are somehow unable to predict the end of their entire world.
There really isn't anything new under the Sun.

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Huntard
Member (Idle past 2295 days)
Posts: 2870
From: Limburg, The Netherlands
Joined: 09-02-2008


Message 9 of 20 (535145)
11-13-2009 5:42 AM
Reply to: Message 8 by iano
11-13-2009 4:53 AM


iano writes:
Not all that much different than another group of people who are able to foresee their own depleting resources, yet are somehow unable to predict the end of their entire world.
What group are you talking about. And might I aslk you to clarify what depleting resources for humans have to do with the end of the world?

I hunt for the truth
I am the one Orgasmatron, the outstretched grasping hand
My image is of agony, my servants rape the land
Obsequious and arrogant, clandestine and vain
Two thousand years of misery, of torture in my name
Hypocrisy made paramount, paranoia the law
My name is called religion, sadistic, sacred whore.
-Lyrics by Lemmy Kilmister of Motorhead

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Iblis
Member (Idle past 3896 days)
Posts: 663
Joined: 11-17-2005


Message 10 of 20 (535146)
11-13-2009 5:44 AM
Reply to: Message 8 by iano
11-13-2009 4:53 AM


Fig Newton
Somehow unable to predict the end of their entire world
But "no man knows the day or the hour" right?
So, assuming this to be true, doesn't it follow that as long as we keep predicting particular days, it certainly won't happen before then, right?
Sir Isaac Newton seems to have thought so:
But he confidently stated in the letter that the Bible proved the world would end in 2060, adding: "It may end later, but I see no reason for its ending sooner."
Continuing in a decidedly sniffy tone, he wrote: "This I mention not to assert when the time of the end shall be, but to put a stop to the rash conjectures of fanciful men who are frequently predicting the time of the end, and by doing so bring the sacred prophesies into discredit as often as their predictions fail."
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/...2060-according-to-newton.do
So then a logical plan for preventing the end of the world or "de-immanentizing the eschaton" ought to be, to find textual reasons for predicting exponentially later and later dates. Yes?
I have a theory about this, which I'm going to call the Big Dope Theory of Superquantum Indeterminacy (SQUID). Briefly, just as entities down under the universe like quarks and neutrinos don't resolve themselves until we are looking at them, so contrariwise things up above the universe like gods, angels and flying spaghetti monsters don't do anything until we are not looking at them.

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Otto Tellick
Member (Idle past 2331 days)
Posts: 288
From: PA, USA
Joined: 02-17-2008


Message 11 of 20 (535438)
11-15-2009 11:44 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by Stile
11-12-2009 9:15 AM


It should be obvious, in view of the technological stature of Mayan culture, that there may be some serious, heavy-weight Mayan machinery still in operation doing who-knows-what, and when the Mayan calendar runs out, the Mayan equivalent of Y2K bugs will start kicking in, and we'll be seeing the Mayan version of All Hell Breaking Loose.
And to make things worse, there are no Mayan technicians around today to do all the sanity checks, preventive maintenance and bug-fixes that the original inventors decided to put off till later.
Well, okay, maybe all that Mayan machinery has already broken down (for lack of regularly scheduled human sacrifices or whatever). That just frees us up for another 26 years...
The 32-bit UNIX epoch comes to an abrupt end at 03:14:07 UTC on Tuesday, 19 January 2038 (cf. the wiki page). Watch out, and be prepared -- you might end up going back to 1901! (so dress appropriately)

autotelic adj. (of an entity or event) having within itself the purpose of its existence or happening.

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Rrhain
Member
Posts: 6351
From: San Diego, CA, USA
Joined: 05-03-2003


(1)
Message 12 of 20 (535451)
11-16-2009 3:26 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by Stile
11-12-2009 9:15 AM


Of course, that's my birthday. If only I had been born just a couple years later. Then I'd be able to turn 42 on 12/22/12. Alas, the birthday where I learn the ultimate answer to life, the universe, and everything will come early.

Rrhain

Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

Minds are like parachutes. Just because you've lost yours doesn't mean you can use mine.

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xongsmith
Member
Posts: 2578
From: massachusetts US
Joined: 01-01-2009
Member Rating: 6.8


(1)
Message 13 of 20 (535878)
11-18-2009 2:39 PM
Reply to: Message 11 by Otto Tellick
11-15-2009 11:44 PM


The 32-bit UNIX epoch comes to an abrupt end at 03:14:07 UTC on Tuesday, 19 January 2038 (cf. the wiki page). Watch out, and be prepared -- you might end up going back to 1901! (so dress appropriately)
Actually, I think you would go back to 0:00 Jan 1st, 1970, so dressing accordingly may even be worse than you thought.

- xongsmith

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CosmicChimp
Member
Posts: 311
From: Muenchen Bayern Deutschland
Joined: 06-15-2007


Message 14 of 20 (535880)
11-18-2009 3:05 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by Stile
11-12-2009 9:15 AM


The Movie 2012
I just got out of the theater. The movie was horrible. Corny to no end, I can't imagine how this could have been any worse, and cruelly too long.

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xongsmith
Member
Posts: 2578
From: massachusetts US
Joined: 01-01-2009
Member Rating: 6.8


Message 15 of 20 (536065)
11-19-2009 3:20 PM
Reply to: Message 12 by Rrhain
11-16-2009 3:26 AM


Rrhain gets his Douglas Adams channel going with
If only I had been born just a couple years later. Then I'd be able to turn 42 on 12/22/12. Alas, the birthday where I learn the ultimate answer to life, the universe, and everything will come early.
This discussion reminds me of an old beatnik poem we knew in high school:
The Fable Of The Final Hour, by Dan Propper in 1958
You can read it all at
The Fable of the Final Hour - Dan Propper - The 3rd Page
...but here is an excerpt I recall:
In the 24th minute of the final hour a flock of diarrhetic
pigeons strafed Miami Beach;

- xongsmith

This message is a reply to:
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