December 21, 2012

I was watching this program on the History Channel pertaining to another doomsday prediction. The expected date of the end of earth was put to the date in the title, December 21,2012.

The program then proceeded to give us the people over time that have independently made this prediction. Few specifically pointed to the date, but most pointed to the year. The people who said this? the maya(or mayans), merlin the magician(yup the arthur one), one prophet in one of the native american tribes, and one gentlemen who made his interpretation of the I-Ching, an old chinese book, that can answer questions.

If you wish to find out more, you only need search 2012 prophecy, or 2012 mayan prophecy and you'll find no dearth of resources on the topic. Now I'm a pretty big sceptic of these doomsday prohpecies and prophecies in general, but I do respect the maya. You may consider them barbarians who sacrificed people (they had a belief that the sun needed human blood to rise like we need food) and had weird rituals, but they were top of the line astronomers, atleast from what I know. They had a set of calenders, that can accuratelt predict solar eclipses and other celestial phenomenon highly accurately even today. The sad part it, most of their knowledge was destroyed by christian priests who considered it the work of the devil, and hence sacriledge. Hence precious little survives from their culture due to the exploits of Mr Cortez, the conquistador who was the first to invade these lands. Whether the maya calender actually says this or it is someone's speculative interpretation of their writings is something that is beyond me to check. But if they do actually say this, it would be worth the time. The calender predicts the alignment of the earth, sun and a black hole at the centre of the milky way in a single line, that is likely to predict the shifting of the earth's poles. If that seems far fetched to you, it's known to be a regular phenomenon in earth's life, and the next flip is way overdue, this much scientists do concede. Why that matters? simply because that field protects life on earth and prevents radiation from coming through, and instead form auroras, the beautiful lights. Without it, no life stands a chance of surviving, at least not the kind we belong to.

So people, mark the date on the calender! this is something that may happen during our lifetimes, and though statistics are against doomsday predictions coming true (we're still alive yet, aren't we?), it's always interesting to see whether this one does.

Naamkaran

It's interesting how we put in so much thought over names. Fact is that I used this name after spending 2 days unable to come up with a name for a blog that I liked and wasn't taken. On a different note, I was reading Freakonomics, and read this chapter on how names don't quite affect anything, they're merely a reflection of our selves, be it our children's names or our creations. Quite simply, this is what I felt after the effort spent in trying to come up with a decent name for a blog, and so I christened it with the name. Believe me, I even tried noname, :D , even that was taken!!

And in keeping with the spirit of the naming, I'd not like to disclose my name. But I believe, a little effort and brains will get u my name.

ps: Naamkaran means christening in Hindi, that's the first clue!