I'm home with a cold. Good thing it's a weekend, costs me nothing to veg on the couch. So, in my mindless channel-surfing, I came across some dumb-ass show on the History Channel about "how the Mayan calendar predicts that Really Bad Shit Will Happen on December 21, 2012."
My response is on several levels, but basically boils down to this: "Shut the fuck up, you stupid morons."
Unless the Mayan gods were real, there is no way that the Mayans could know anything about the galaxy beyond what could be seen with the naked eye. They probably were excellent astronomers and observers, but they had no telescopes or any other known method of enhancing what can be seen with a Mk1 eyeball. So do not give me any crap about they knew that the center of our galaxy has a black hole and the 2012 Winter Solstice is some magical date.
You might recall all of the "end of times" predictions that were set for 2000 and the closest we came to that was the hijacked presidential election later that year.
Second, suppose, for the sake of argument, that there is something to all of this "end of the long calendar" shit and there is a planetary shaking that results in either the fall of civilization or another mass extinction event. What, practically, can you do about that, especially the "mass extinction" part?
My belief is that, unless someone has some firm proof to the contrary, and that does not include a bunch of mystical horseshit, then the resetting of the Mayan calendar has no more significance than the resetting of our annual calendar.
And I think it is time that I remove the History Channel from my TV's channel list, for they have clearly gone right over the fraking edge of rationality.
Saturday, March 14, 2009
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4 comments:
The Hitler Channel pissed away its credibility long ago. UFOs, Hitler, creationism, Hitler, prophecy, Hitler, Himmler, Hitler, Rommel, Hitler...
Did the Mayans even have a December 21st? Maybe their calendar started on what we call December 22 every year. Why is that particular set of number significant. Sounds like their year began on the first day of winter, rather than a week and a half later.
Oh, nevermind.
The History Channel should just rename itself Religiospiracy Channel. Everything it plays is either pseudoscience (Nostradamus, aliens, monsters, hauntings) or religion (Da Vinci Code specials, seven deadly sins, bible stories).
Truly sad.
The problem with the History Channel is that there isn't a whole lot of ways to make the vast majority of history interesting to a mass market.
On the flip side, Modern Marvel's "Corn" episode was well worth the watch.
Always good to hear about corn.
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