
Has anyone asked the Mayans?
Has anyone asked the Mayans?
Seems like they built a calendar that outlasted their nation.
Seems to have been a very effective calendar.
Those folks counting down to the end of the world, currently scheduled for 21 December according to the Mayan calendar, are going to be disappointed, a gaggle of experts have said. Archaeologists, anthropologists and other experts in old things meeting over the weekend in Mexico have suggested that the Mayas may indeed have …
I can just imagine modern civilisation collapsing (due to a global thermonuclear overpopulation GMO nanobot insect warming catastrophe no doubt no doubt), and our future descendants, their civilisation rising from the ashes of ours, pointing to our calendar and saying "OMG - the Gregorian calendar only has 4 digits, what will happen when 9999 turns to 10,000??? End of the world OMG!!!!"
It's the same thing innit?
We can standardise time down to physical contants (vibrating atoms etc.) but we have more difficulty tying down actualities such as periods of time - look at the Jewish Orthodox/Muslim/Far Eastern calendars - all on different timescales but with days as the standard (obviously).
If we could work out how many seconds have occured since the Big bang we might have something to count up from, but as it is we just count from 'signifigant event' upwards.
Anybody remember what Startrek Stardates were based on?
"Anybody remember what Startrek Stardates were based on?"
Ahem... they were originally the date in which the epposide was finished, along with the series number and then a random number following that.
/geek mode
Annon cause i dont want the wrath of Khan / BattleStar Glactica fans / Star Wars fans after me
All those people thinking the world will end based on a Mayan prophecy seem to have missed the elephant in the room. The Maya didn't seem to forecast that they wouldn't be around to see it, so the accuracy of their forecasts is obviously not to be relied on.
However, if all the batshit crazy doom-mongers who live their lives based on the centuries old scribblings of dead civilisations would like to leave the planet on Dec 21st, I'll be more than happy to wave them off.
That your "strict Mayan religious beliefts [sic]" don't match up with any of the actual archeological finds or Mayan beliefs, then yes, absolutely like all the rest of Religion. None of those other religions are keeping their written laws either, IE "do not harm" or "don't murder".
Are you absolutely sure about that?
It's a bit Anglican, in that no-one really believes in it, but it's the default option if you don't think about things too much. Or possibly Catholic, in that you use it because that's what your parents gave you to use (and you feel a bit guilty about it).
Opera on the other hand is a bit more..... shall we say "Scientologist"?
According to my understanding, the date (written in ancient Mayan numerals: base 20, but with the last-but-one digit in base-18, thus giving a 360-day year) overflows from 4 to 5 digits on 21 December 2012. The calendar monks (or whatever their proper title was), being able to make several days' worth of predictions per day, soon got ahead of themselves; so the rollover afforded them a convenient excuse to take a well-earned break.
However, before they could resume writing predictions for the 5-digit dates, a few dozen pissed-up Dagoes arrived, slaughtered all the Mayans and nicked their gold. They didn't predict that .....
Y2K was mainly a non-issue all along, although a few scam-artists managed to make a quick buck out of it. (And a company I worked for at the time had to certify some fully analogue modules -- none of them bearing any semiconductor device more sophisticated than a triac-- as "Y2K compliant".)
"The majority of potential issues" are going to happen in 2038, when the 32-bit Unix timestamp rolls over.
Um yes. The company i worked for made embedded controllers and yes, we did have roll over problems that we had to fix.
Y2K was a non event because we put work into making it a non event. There seem to be a large amount of ignorant people who claim "it was a load of hype because it didn't happen"
And we don't know it yet. Like the chicken with its head cut off, we're still very busy doing a lot of things. "Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing etc.etc."
If the world ends with EOTW 2.0, we wouldn't be able to go on line to comment about it and vote on the comments.
So yes, EOTW 3.0 is a major improvement. We are able to discuss the end of the world after it ended. How cool is that?
... that the Mayans considered 13 a lucky number, and so entering the 13th baktun would be considered (in Mayan think) a Good Thing.
As noted in the article, the calendar itself supposedly goes out into the 4000s, so if the Mayans thought 2012 was going to be the be-all/end-all, they probably wouldn't have bothered.
Sadly, there are actually people in my area of residence buying guns and survival rations for this.
(sigh)
Like I said in the header, I wish I could remember where I read that, because I'd like to hand a copy of that to a few people running around like Chicken Little.
Some clerk was given the job to make a calendar. He began, but eventually as with all things, he had to stop. 2012 was so far into their future that it made no difference. Idiots, sorry experts today put meaning to the end of days. My brother has been bleating on about it. As the date draws closer he keeps changing altering what 'the end' means. The Earth will split in two, the poles will shift, the world governments will implode, they way mankind behaves will change... The list goes on. I predict that he will shut up on that day.
I always thought Doomsday will be caused when an as yet unknown scientist working on quantum power generation accidentally initiates a Big Bang.
We all know that the words of creation were in fact "Hey I wonder what this button does"...
Shortly followed by "Oops.. Call insurance, we have another black hole in the lab again."
Said black hole expanded outwards into M-space "creating" our Universe as it went.
AC but not as we know it...
Death can be excruiciatingly painful, such as being forced to listen to Lady Gaga over and over at 95dB until one's head explodes.
Although the electric chair improperly used has to be pretty high up on the list, death by fire is pretty nasty.
I've heard of the infamous case where someone's hair turned white due to the pain...
AC/DC
I have decided to join Rooney's 47% non-tac paying fraternity, whether he likes it or not. Then I can claim my free telephone.
I'm not alone, over 2000 households earning USD$1,000,000 plus last year in the US also collected unemployment benefits.
Good place America, regardless of what the Mayans say.