Prediction: Not Doomsday

This year saw, despite its relative lack of importance, two predictions of the end of the world that failed to materialize.  The world neither ended on 21 March nor on 21 October as Harold Camping predicted.

Picture from the Washington Post:  Mayan green ceramic calendar (Stephen Drago) 

Some people are now sure that the world will end when the Mayan calendar ends a year from today.  Except that scientists at the University of Texas and at Cornell University say that this is a misconception.

Its Long Count calendar begins in 3,114 B.C., marking time in roughly 394-year periods known as Baktuns. Thirteen was a significant, sacred number for the Mayas, and the 13th Baktun ends around Dec. 21, 2012.

"It's a special anniversary of creation," said David Stuart, a specialist in Mayan epigraphy at the University of Texas at Austin. "The Maya never said the world is going to end, they never said anything bad would happen necessarily, they're just recording this future anniversary on Monument Six."

To paraphrase a line from The Dark Crystal, "endings, beginnings, they are all the same."  The world will end when we each go to sleep and begin anew tomorrow.

My prediction, the world continues after 21 December 2012.  It even continues after 22 December 2012.  And so on.

2 January 2012, FollowUp 1.

13 March 2012, FollowUp 2.