So Whats This 2012 Shit Anyway?

2012 will mark the first Olympic games to be contested in an un-finished stadium. You know us Brits can't organise building projects for shit. Also, according to the Ghost Recon timeline 2012 is when America gets invaded by a bunch of Mexicans and I'm pretty sure Frontlines cites 2012 as the beginning of World War 3 so the signs are definitely all there.

As I understand it, the shift in Earth's magnetic axis will most likely confuse a load of migrating birds and fish more than anything else but I do tend to only ever read the first paragraph of New Scientist articles.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by LeHah

You still finished it on time.

Barely. There was still scaffolding all over it on the millenium night. Also I cite the new Wembley stadium as an example of British building projects, cost double the budget and took a couple of years longer than it should have.

The Millenium Dome got bought by O2 and is now the O2 arena. They have concerts there that nobody can get home from because the public transport infrastructure never got finished properly and there's only about 20 parking spaces on site.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Pangalin

We'll just send the Space Marines, yeah?

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by Crash Landon

Would you care to back that up with, you know, evidence, oh weary time-traveller?

This site says a lot of the same things as others I've seen

About half way down, it explains that per some interpretations of when the Mayan long-count date started, it resets to 13.0.0.0.0 on either the 21st or 23rd of December 2012. The Mayan long-count system is days on the far right, then uinals, 20 days each, then tuns, 18 uinals or 360 days, more or less a year, then katuns which are 20 tuns or 20 years, then baktuns which are 20 katuns or 400 odd years. There are 13 Katuns in the long-count so assuming archaeologists are right and they started counting in 3,114 BC, it's almost time for a reset.

Why the Mayans chose a 13 Katun cycle I couldn't tell you. They used 20's as a basis for most of their time divisions (Fingers and toes probably). The Aztec calendar had years split into 13 months of 28 days each with an extra day at the end called the day out of time. This suggests mathematical reasons as you get a whole number of days in each month with one remainder but also suggests that the number 13 was significant, otherwise why not have 14 months of 26 days? I've not read enough about the subject to know any more than that but idle speculation would suggest a connection to the zodiac of Western culture, possibly with an extra constellation you can only see from the southern hemisphere.

People are clearly putting far too much store in an ancient calendar system predicting the end of the world, especially as the Mayans had words for much longer periods of time. An alautun for example is 63 million years. The idea of the world ending has probably evolved from the Mayan use of two calendar systems to keep track of months. One was a 365 day cycle, the other a 260 day one which meant that they came into synch every 18,980 days. Mayans all shit themselves thinking the world would end every 52 years when this date rolled around so the tradition of resetting dates leading to armageddon probably springs from this. It's a little arrogant to believe that an arbitrary numbering system to record the passage of time could have any bearing whatsoever on actual global events. That's the kind of crap people get into their heads if you let priests get too much power...

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?