Gob,. Are you dead yet?

[Crackpot]

It's almost 2 pm on the 20th here and I wanted to know if the world had ended in Aus yet?

[MajGenl.Meade]

Er.... Gob? Hello Gob? Oh my...

Did they actually give a time for this event or is just some time in the 24 hours of the 21st?

In South Africa and other non-USA locations, today was 20/12/2012 which is kind of neat. Also the real beginning of summer.

[The Hen]

So far so good.

All appears as normal for this side of the planet.

[Lord Jim]

I guess I should go ahead and pay the bills....

[Gob]

I'm not sure C-P, I could be dead and this could be hell.

[The Hen]

You're loving it.

[Gob]

Well yes, no bloody Christians here for a start...

Oh, apart from Mormons and Jehovah's witnesses, and Catholics, they got it wrong apparently.

[Lord Jim]

BTW, we may not be out of the woods yet....

A New Agey lady who runs a little gift shop I was in earlier today, told me that the clock would stat ticking on the 24 hours of December 21st, at midnight in the time zone the Mayans lived in.....

That would be Central America; southern Mexico...

Which would make it either EST or CST, US time....

[rubato]

I don't think the Mayans knew that the earth was shaped like a globe, or about time zones.

But then neither did the RC church until the reformation made them stop killing scientists long enough to figure it out.

yrs,
rubato

[Lord Jim]

I don't think the Mayans knew that the earth was shaped like a globe, or about time zones.

Uh, no, but they obviously knew how to measure days, (or they, uh, well, couldn't have developed a calendar...)

And it stands to reason that any predictions about events that were supposed to happen on a given date in their calendar would correspond to when that date began for them....

And just as the date in question from the Mayan calendar has been calculated by those who study these things to translate to the modern calendar as December 21st, 2012, (this may come as news to you, but in addition to not knowing about time zones, the Mayans had never heard of "December" either...) it would be logical to measure the day beginning with when the Mayans would have measured it....

Which today would mean either EST or CST....

(It's amazing to me that I'm having to explain this....)

[Rick]

They were CST...

[Sue U]

They were CST...

Got all their TV programs an hour early.

[Rick]

Same as me

[rubato]

They were CST...

Got all their TV programs an hour early.

Like Mayan Angeloos kitchen.

yrs,
rubato

[liberty]

They were CST...

Got all their TV programs an hour early.

Like Mayan Angeloos kitchen.

yrs,
rubato

It is going to be ok; I saw the commercial on TV. Jell-O pudding, or whatever, has saved us. They made a trek and to Mayan pyramid and a sacrificed an offering of pudding.

[The Hen]

On the off chance the world ends an 10:15 pm tonight, I have taken the sensible step off ensuring I have had lots of alcohol to help me on my way.

I'll see you all on the other side .... If I can manage to catch the next bus.

[Daisy]

If the world ends today, I'm gonna be super pissed off about booking a cruise that starts tomorrow!

[Gob]

Watch out for tidal waves Dais!!

[Lord Jim]

Maya "end of days" fever reaches climax in Mexico

CHICHEN ITZA, Mexico (Reuters) - Thousands of mystics, hippies and spiritual wanderers will descend on the ruins of Maya cities on Friday to celebrate a new cycle in the Maya calendar, ignoring fears in some quarters that it might instead herald the end of the world.

Brightly dressed indigenous Mexican dancers whooped and invoked a serpent god near the ruins of Chichen Itza late on Thursday, while meditating westerners hoped for the start of a "golden age" of humanity.

"I see it as a changing of an energy, the changing of a guard, the changing of universal consciousness," said Serg Miejylo, a 29-year-old gardener originally from Connecticut.

Wearing sandals, smoking a rolled-up cigarette and sporting blonde dreadlocks, Miejylo is among those joining the festivities at Maya sites in southern Mexico and parts of Central America.

But while people here were celebrating, the close of the 13th bak'tun - a period of some 400 years - in the 5,125-year-old Long Calendar of the Maya has raised fears among groups around the world that the end is nigh.

A U.S. scholar once said it could be seen as a kind of "Armageddon" by the illustrious Mesoamerican culture, and over time the idea snowballed into a belief that the Maya calendar had predicted the earth's destruction.

Fears of mass suicides, meteorites, huge power cuts, natural disasters, epidemics or an asteroid hurtling toward Earth have circulated on the Internet ahead of December 21.

Chinese police have arrested about 1,000 people this week for spreading rumors about December 21, and authorities in Argentina restricted access to a mountain popular with UFO-spotters after rumors began spreading that a mass suicide was planned there.

In Texas, video game mogul Richard Garriott de Cayeux decided to throw his most elaborate party ever at midnight - just in case the Earth did come to an end.

Maya experts, scientists and even U.S. space agency NASA insist the Maya did not predict the world's end and that there is nothing to worry about.

"Think of it like Y2K," said James Fitzsimmons, a Maya expert at Middlebury College in Vermont. "It's the end of one cycle and the beginning of another cycle."

A NEW DAWN?

New Age optimism, stream-of-consciousness evocations of wonder and awe, and starry-eyed dreams of extra-terrestrial contact have descended on the ancient sites this week - leaving the modern Maya bemused.

"It's pure Hollywood," said Luis Mis Rodriguez, 45, a Maya selling obsidian figurines and souvenirs shaped into knives like ones the Maya once used for human sacrifice.[Yes sir, there's nothing like having a bunch of New Age suckers descend on your town to get the ol' cash registers humming for the local economy... ...Just ask the merchants of Taos New Mexico...]

http://news.yahoo.com/maya-end-days-fev ... 19391.html

[MajGenl.Meade]

Wearing sandals, smoking a rolled-up cigarette

Oh yeah, riiiiiiight!