El_Gringo_Grande

Yea, I always imagined it something like this.

Manager: "Hey Acan, can I see you in here?"

Acan: "Yea sure, whats up?"

Manager: "As you know our civilization isn't doing all that well. And upper management has determined that the current calender is plenty. I mean come on, it is already like 2000 years from now."

Acan: "But I am at a very odd place, can't I just finish out the century?"

Manager: "No, I am sorry. There just isn't the funding. Virgin sacrifices are VERY expensive now a days and they are doing so many of them to save the crops."

Acan: "I understand but... How bout just the decade, that is like only 88 years."

Manager shakes head no.

Acan: "Well how about just letting me finish the year I am on. It is only like 7 more days! What are people going to think about it ending on Dec 23? That is just weird. I could get it done by the end of the..."

Manager: "No. I have my orders. Now please pack up your belongings. I am sorry. Don't make me get security."

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Sen. John McCain (AZ) For President '08
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I’m not racists, I have republican friends. Radio show host.
- "The essence of tyranny is the denial of complexity". -Jacob Burkhardt
- "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" - Emerson
- "People should not be afraid of it's government, government should be afraid of it's People." - Line from V for Vendetta
- If software were as unreliable as economic theory, there wouldn't be a plane made of anything other than paper that could get off the ground. Jim Fawcette

Atomic Dog

ahahahahahahahaha...oh...that's too funny!

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ScratchMonkey

Crap. I saw the thread title and was hoping this would be about cooking!

Kerostasis

As I understand it, Dec 23rd 2012 in the Mayan Calendar would be roughly equivalent to Dec 31st 9999 in our calendar system. Its not that they didn't finish out the year or that they stopped at an odd place, that WAS the end of the year in their calendar, and its only the end because you run out of numbers afterwards. You could always start over and say tomorrow is Jan 1st year 1 again, but you couldn't just add another digit and say its year 10,000 because they didn't have the same concept of place value.

...at least I think thats the way it works. Its been awhile since I studied this stuff.

Edit: After a quick 15 minutes of research, it looks like my comment about place value is completely wrong, and they can extend the number of digits used indefinately to handle numbers as big as they want. 2012 is actually the end of the 13th "baktun" 400-year block in their calendar, and while the calendar can easily run up to 20 baktuns before needing a new digit, they held a special reverence for the number 13 and believed that the previous world had ended after 13 baktuns. That doesn't necessarily mean that the current world will also end after 13 of them, but I suppose it could.

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AMosely

I disagree. The biggest threat to mankind today is the massive amount of nuclear weapons whose target paths practically criscross the entire planet, and a global population that remains largely unhappy. If you think the cold war was the height of nuclear insecurity, go take a quick survey of the political situation in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and even India. Then take a look at the current diplomatic triangle between Iran, Russia and the U.S.

I'd rather worry about asteroids.

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