Dec. 21, 2012

[marv75]

What do you guys make of all these TV specials on the Mayans and their long count calendar and the supposed end of days...I mean I saw on Inside Edition some idiot wearing a gas mask and hazard suit and he said it would protect him from anything...gimme a break!
I'm not saying I believe we're all gonna go, but if it happens there's nothing we can do anyways. Companies spend too much time investing in entertainment technology (Well that's what people want, just gotta buy the latest and greatest cell phone)
And now with the stupid movie coming out...well it just grinds my gears because the media is going to keep hyping all of this until we wish we're dead. If you're worried pray to God, if not live your life, right? :)

(Maybe I'll start a column like on Family Guy..."Things that grind my gears"


Marv.

 

[StevOz]

I guess it comes down to whether you believe everything is predetermined or not. Frankly I believe in chance and free will so all these Mayan superstitions are just that. Whilst their calendar maybe fairly accurate in an astrological sense it in no way predicts anything other then the seasons and the movement of the stars. Which whilst a fairly impressive achievement for an early society, it's not exactly rocket science these days.

 

[marv75]

Yeah but these scientists are just hell bent on the poles flipping, have many poles, and solar flares getting into our stratosphere! I mean it's all interesting to them, but they're literally gonna scare some people as they beat this into the ground...I mean it's 2009, wait until the date gets closer...are people gonna go into mass hysteria over what they watch on TV or read in a magazine? Maybe it's just a ploy for all this go-green whackos?
Personally I don't care let come what may. We haven't exactly treated the planet well over the last 150 years or so.
And of course there's always the Nostradamus predictions and how the folks that interpret them say they're accurate and such...to me it's a lot of BS as anyone of us could predict something vague and have someone believe it to be accurate.
Well whether fate or not the US is waging 2 futile wars and spending god knows how much money a day and putting our troops in constant mortal danger. Bring them all home and fortify our defenses here and guard the borders. The Taliban and other extremists are fighting what they believe to be a holy war against us and they're never gonna stop. How much debt must we go into (And how much debt of ours must China own) and how many of our soldiers as well as troops from other nations must die for a war that may never end?
I mean you got Iraq and Pakistan out there too and you know Iraq qill eventually get nukes and aim them straight at Israel. They're all nuts! :)

 

[StevOz]

No doubt pole reversal has happened in the past and will happen again..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_reversal


It may even happen in 2012, though I doubt it will and if it does it's no proof the Mayans got it right, may have been just a lucky guess. Besides the effects of such an event are not likely to be as catastrophic as the sensationalists might like you to believe and as you say, nought you or I can do about it either way.

Effects on biosphere and human society

Because the magnetic field has never been observed to reverse by humans with instrumentation, and the mechanism of field generation is not well understood, it is difficult to say what the characteristics of the magnetic field might be leading up to such a reversal. Some speculate that a greatly diminished magnetic field during a reversal period will expose the surface of the earth to a substantial and potentially damaging increase in cosmic radiation. However, Homo erectus and their ancestors certainly survived many previous reversals. There is no uncontested evidence that a magnetic field reversal has ever caused any biological extinctions. A possible explanation is that the solar wind may induce a sufficient magnetic field in the Earth's ionosphere to shield the surface from energetic particles even in the absence of the Earth's normal magnetic field.<sup id="cite_ref-7" class="reference">

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[Isaac Sauvage]

neil degrasse tyson said that the idea of the mayan calendar is this- at the end of the cosmic calendar the cycle gets reset from the beginning. that's it. in other words, it's like december 31st passing, bringing us to january 1st. the 'gloom and doom, end of days' thing is just some modern peoples' interpretation for what will happen. pretty-much like taking a tribal tradition and trying to use it to make a case for the apocalypse as written in the bible. makes sense, since the bible is indelibly steeped into western culture whether we're aware of it or not.

another thing to think about is- how many 'primitive' religions actually predict the end of the world? and how is such a thing useful to anyone? let's face it, they were smarter than that. a lot smarter. those types of religions are crafted by a long line of people who had mystical experience (the shamans) guiding and shaping the whole thing. they're not fools. they got all the important stuff- that nature and reality work in cycles, that all life is interconnected, that there's no real reason to worry, etc.

it's --modern-- man who is the big promoter of things to worry about, not people like the ancient mayans. read the papers, see the ads, watch the movies... our culture is about attachment to a certain standard of life and all the ways that those attachments can be threatened, hence all the things to be fearful about. this '2012' business is just a way of taking the usual message and ratcheting up the intensity. but it's still the same old message. and it sells, of course, which is why it works.

 

[Rick2007]

Sooner or Later Earth will be hit by another BIG PIECE Of Celestial Crap.
If You have a doubt about this ,,, just aim a telescope at the MOON and look at all
of the craters on the Moons surface. All of Those craters missed Us when the Moon
was either close to the Inbound side of the Earth, or maybe an outbound near miss.
Some of those Craters are large enough to take out a Big City.

We just had a near miss. Still,,,,,,,,,,,NOT Worth The Worry!!!
I think that 2012 seemed so far in the Mayan Future
that they could not Comprehend it.

Who Knows????????????

 

[bob]

Doomsday. The end of the world. I'm 56 yrs old, so I'm getting closer to doomsday every year. :)

Here's a list of over 200 dates where people have tried to predict The End.

http://www.bible.ca/pre-date-setters.htm

They have all been wrong so far.

I predict the world will end when someone creates Virtual Reality Porno, as no one will take off those headsets, so everyone will starve to death.

 

[mrschultz]

Doomsday. The end of the world. I'm 56 yrs old, so I'm getting closer to doomsday every year. :)

Here's a list of over 200 dates where people have tried to predict The End.

http://www.bible.ca/pre-date-setters.htm

Great list.

Chances are there will be some global disaster in the future, so as long as people keep predicting, eventually someone will be right...

 

[marv75]

Some people even things Aliens will intervene if something cataclysmic would happen...I swear they're here by the state of the world today. Some folk are just too weird or psychotic too be human. Come on Dennis Rodman has to be an alien, right? (Remember that joke in Men In Black?)
Yeah, all kinds of people have predicted the end times, the rapture and so forth. I guess it's up to you on what you believe...(And is Mel Gibson an alien also?) Am I?
Aliens would think we're still too savage and unevolved to actually greet us, at least that's my opinion. My Dad still thinks I'm an alien! :)
Anyone see the newer The Day the Earth Stood Still? Wasn't great, but the message was quite clear and green if ya get my meaning. What if this really isn't our world? And someday whoever will come back and see how we trashed the planet and wipe us clean...Nah, I think there's a better chance of us doing that to ourselves.
There's still a lot of mysteries out there....I mean the pyramids and how precisely they were built...the melting of platinum when it takes something like 3000 degrees normal fire's not gonna cut it. Back to the pyramids and the Sphinx...there's no way without some kind of major help they could haul that size of stone and put it into place....I don't care how many slaves the Egyptians had. Think of that even today it would take us quite an effort to do it, even with our technology.
One last thing I do believe amongst countless planets and stars that there is life beyond our own...the odds are too great there wouldn't be. We can only see so far and really can't travel anywhere fast enough to find out...Well they think it's possible life could have been on mars but wouldn't it take the shuttle like 70 years or so to get there (And obviously there wouldn't be a gas station nearby and like we don't live that long:))...all we can do is probes and landers...Man I wish I was born much farther into the future...
I also believe there are cures for diseases out there like cancer (all types) and diabetes and such...Maybe I'm a little on the conspiracy side, but think of all the cancer doctors that would be out of work, and really it's the insurance and drug industry that would lose count-less money...they don't all truly want you to get better...then you wouldn't need them...most drugs only mask symptoms not heal them...they are getting better with AIDS- heard something about a vaccine...but that disease will genetically mutate itself. Cancer's been around much longer and depending on what type, let's say bone, all our meager technological prowess can do is cut things out of you and radiate you and kill good cells along with it. There's so many pollutants and chemicals cancer's not just for smokers.
Sorry my Aunt died a few years back of bone cancer and even at the Cleveland Clinic that's ultimately the best they could do for her. She was 46, passed 3 days before her birthday. Now something's that more well known and been around for at least 50 years and ya wonder why I wonder what's up. AIDS and HIV were not discovered until the 70s and diabetes has probably been around forever...are we causing our own demise with our lust for more technology? What's next SkyNet and the Terminators?
You can only harm something (Earth) so long before something gives...I just hope my own kids or their kids have to witness or die young...
One last thing that grinds my gears...actually a question. When will WWIII start or has it already begun? :)

 

[mrschultz]

There's still a lot of mysteries out there....I mean the pyramids and how precisely they were built...the melting of platinum when it takes something like 3000 degrees normal fire's not gonna cut it. Back to the pyramids and the Sphinx...there's no way without some kind of major help they could haul that size of stone and put it into place....I don't care how many slaves the Egyptians had. Think of that even today it would take us quite an effort to do it, even with our technology.

This "even today it would be hard" is total bullshit. If you see any program or read this you can be sure everything else in the program is just as much crap. All the ancient constructions could be built today far easier than they were back then.

Also just about all the claims of how hard it would have been for such "primitive" people to build certain things have been debunked, with people using primitive tools and techniques to recreate what the ancients did.

One last thing I do believe amongst countless planets and stars that there is life beyond our own...the odds are too great there wouldn't be. We can only see so far and really can't travel anywhere fast enough to find out...Well they think it's possible life could have been on mars but wouldn't it take the shuttle like 70 years or so to get there

A manned mission to Mars would be about 3 years round trip. But it would be pointless to send a person at this point, would be horrible to send a team to explore an area of the planet and find out it was the wrong spot. Another 20 years of probes and we should have a good idea what areas of Mars might be good to explore in ways remote probes can't.

 

[sleepy]

the melting of platinum when it takes something like 3000 degrees normal fire's not gonna cut it.

They probably didn't melt it, though if they did , a conventional campfire with a 12 inch diameter would be sufficient to reach 3,214.9 F.

Have you ever heard of the Goldbeaters? They lump the gold by beating on the ore.

 

[mrschultz]

The forging of iron has been dated back to at least 2500BC, the first artifacts seem to be from meteorites. Would only take a few hundred more degrees F to melt platinum vs. melting a meteorite.

The people that push all this misinformation always do stuff like that, say it would take higher temperature than normal fire, just leave out the fact that people have known how to make hotter fires since Mesopotamia.

Unfortunately this stuff makes it into TV shows and books, partly due to a total lack of fact checking, but mostly due to the networks wanting controversial and shocking stuff to draw in the suckers. It's gotten to the point that outright lies are now treated as "opinion" and allowed to go on the air.

Edit: Another trick they use is to say something like " Scientists don't know what will happen when the Earth passes the center of the galactic plane in 2012. ". Since it's a prediction about stuff that might happen on a day in the future it's not a all out lie. But it leads you to think something might happen because of an event, the wording leads you to make a connection that doesn't exist. A scientist would tell you that it takes the Earth decades to pass through the plane of the galaxy and being in the middle of that pass is no different than today or any other day during the passing.

 

[sleepy]

The people that push all this misinformation always do stuff like that, say it would take higher temperature than normal fire, just leave out the fact that people have known how to make hotter fires since Mesopotamia.

Our sources of knowledge, for instance, Encyclopedia Britannica, are also guilty of misinformation.
For instance, this encyclopedia states that metallic Tin "is refined by a complex scientific process involving 2000 degrees of applied heat".

Well, *cough*, the traditional method is to slosh dirt which contains Tin together with some water, then let set to precipitate the insoluble materials. Pour off the dirty solute into a pot with a lid.
Set the lidded pot inside a closed oven and bake at the melting temperature of metallic tin, 449.47 F. You can use 450 F. but do not use higher temperatures in order to prevent other materials like Lead from precipitating.
Be aware that higher temperatures may not be safe. For instance, sodium chloride can explode in air at temperatures above 550 F., though it may not necessarily do so in water. I'm not clear on this point, so be careful. EDIT: DO NOT REMOVE THE POT FROM THE OVEN! TURN OFF THE HEAT AND LET IT COOL DOWN TO ROOM TEMPERATURE FIRST! BEFORE YOU EVEN THINK OF REMOVING THE POT OR THE LID. LET IT COOL DOWN FIRST IN ORDER TO PREVENT DANGEROUS VIOLENT RELEASE OF STEAM! Also, keep dirt off the pot to prevent smoke and do not use your food oven to try this. Some materials both in soils and their smoke and in water are toxic.

Keep the lid on the pot to prevent boiling the water. Water requires exposure to atmosphere in order to boil. In the closed oven, a lidded pot of water will not boil. Otherwise, the tin will not reduce or precipitate in boiling water.

The dissolved tin will precipitate as the metal due to the water behaving as separate oxygen, then hydrogen reducers. Repeat to accumulate.
Then put the tin in fresh water and repeat to remove impurities.

 

[Shadow]

Hi marv...long time - no talk to.

Anyway . . .doomsday started to countdown for you, and every fucker else, the day you were born . . .

. . .now, if some cataclysmic event were to accelerate that process . . .

. . .well, who'll give a shit . . .

 

[marv75]

Right on Shadow! But I still don't believe the Egyptians did everything themselves. Build me a time machine and we'll know for sure. And I don't trust the experts and our technology to debunk anything...cure cancer and I'll start to believe! :)