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New Year's Eve 1999. The world waited, watched, and held its breath, expecting all computer systems around the planet to crash, and take civilization along with them into some black silicon hole from which there was no escape.
Never happened.
The only survival kit I needed January 1st, 2000, was a long winter's nap to sleep off the beer of our partying at home with neighbors the night before. We can't ignore the fact that the new century really didn't get underway until a year later. Yeah, alarmists tended to overlook that.
Even my GW2K G2 did nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing. I sat nearby while the ball dropped. Nothing. The 1999 technology, then sitting in a corner of our kitchen, is about what you can now slip on your belt, as most of us do. The machine is still in the basement waiting to be reborn as a big doorstop or a small anchor.
Ten years later and some are looking to 2012 as a pivotal year. Nostradamus alleges to have singled out 2012 in one of his quatrains as the year that the world now known will end. It's unclear, in my view, whether or not a new world will emerge, only that the one we're now calling home is finished in 2012.
Why, even the Mayans, that mysterious and brilliant tribe that once ruled the Yucatan and Meso-American culture, are said to have nailed 2012 as doomsday, or is that doomsyear?
Mathematical and astronomical systems, art and architecture, were all in full and practiced use by the Mayans. A bit beyond twenty years ago, I had the great good fortune to see Tulum and stand on the very sand of that breathtaking beach you see right here.Somewhere, there's a photo of my then fiancee and me, arm in arm in the brilliant Caribbean sunshine of a January day. All smiles for the camera, I couldn't take my eyes off of her, yet the ruins and the "it-can't-be real-but-is" blue of the water, and the significance of where we stood was not lost on me.
We had a tour guide that day, a gentleman of Mayan descent, who walked us through the ruins. The one thing that forever stuck in my mind is his saying the Mayans, despite their advanced state, had yet to discover and/or invent the wheel. Even today, that sounds suspicious to me.
Sitting here on New Year's day 2010, it seems to me he never mentioned that our world was in its final decades, either.
Despite many swearing that the Mayans predicted 2012 as at least the beginning of the end, factual information argues strongly to the contrary. Put another way, they never said any such thing.
The Mayan calendar apparently ends with 2012, does that mean it's over? For good measure, it's now also said that the Mayans set the date, that would be December 21st, 2012, which means we'll miss Thanksgiving by one day, while many will have finished up Christmas shopping before Earth goes spinning out of its orbit and tumbles off into the cosmos. December 21st is also the Winter Solstice, so will winter have begun, not begun, or be just beginning at the very second the world comes to an end?
See, I love a good conspiracy theory, so much so that my belief is that one day, some theory will turn out to be true. What then will happen is that no one will believe it's true, because there are so many conspiracy theories to choose from that the very one that proves true will be dismissed as just another crock.
Will the world end in 2012? Given the ignored fact that the Mayans observed several different calendars, all of which appear to reset and recycle upon expiration, and that what they observed changed frequently, odds favor a big disappointment for all local chapters of The End-Is-Near Club.
Also ignored is that pesky little fact that no Mayan calendar matches up with the calendar we use, the Gregorian Calendar.
Had enough? One more bothersome fact. There is ample proof suggesting that the Mayan 2012 matches up with the Gregorian 2007, meaning that it already happened, we're still here, and not to worry.
Will it all end in 2012? Betting huge money against it would be pretty safe. If our world is still here in 2013, you could win, win big. If it's not here, you can't collect, you can't pay. A genuine win-win.
Happy New Year!
