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Born Simon ben Kosiba, Simon bar Kokhba led the Bar Kokhba revolt against the Roman empire. The revolt succeeded momentarily, and the Romans were expelled from Judea — but the conflict was far from over. Tune in and learn what happened next.
Even while Mayan protests that their calendar is cyclical, another signal that the world will sink into catastrophe in 2012 has emerged. As pointed out in a recent New York Times article about Visa’s transaction fees, plastic payment for transactions is expected to overtake cash that year. That seems like enough evidence to imagine the earth splitting in two and swallowing us into its molten heart hippie and Republican alike. No one will be spared.
Thousands of people across the globe believe the world will end in 2012 — but why? Tune in and learn more about the beliefs of 2012ers, from interpretations of the ancient Mayan calendar to concerns over irregular sunspot cycles and solar storms.
Roland Emmerich’s latest foray into all things end-of-the-world, “2012,” hits theaters next week. And, like his last big-budget disaster flick, “The Day After Tomorrow,” it promises to be a visually frenetic hodgepodge of as many types of natural disaster as possible. It has volcanoes. And earthquakes. And tsunamis. It doesn’t — at least from the look of the previews — depict the resulting flood flash-freezing and somehow not expanding to crush everything in its path, but that probably would have been anticlimactic in the wake of a tidal wave big enough to capsize an aircraft carrier.
So the other day, fellow blogger Marshall Brain posted a couple of YouTube videos about whether the world’s going to end in 2012. Naturally, this has led to a lot of discussion about religion and just what the likes of Yahweh and Shiva have to say about all this. So I thought I might take just a moment of everyone’s time to point out an excellent online tool for deciding just how boned we are.
You Asked: Is the world going to end in 2012? If not 2012, is it ever going to end? — Blanche, Topeka, KS Marshall Brain Answered: There seems to be a lot of hype around 2012 but this kind of hype is pretty common. You may recall that the world was also going to end [...]
TechStuff blogger Jonathan Strickland has been giving me stuff to blog about all week. So far I’ve managed to cover almost none of it. But since it’s Friday afternoon and time for something fun, here’s one of the things he sent me on Wednesday: a re-cut trailer for the movie “2012,” which is slated to come out in November.
Like many science geeks, I’m torn about “2012.” On the one hand: Chiwetel Ejiofor (of “Serenity” and “Kinky Boots”), John Cusack (of “High Fidelity” and … do I really need to explain?), and gratuitous destruction. On the other hand: Bad science. I know what to expect on that front since I’ve seen director Roland Emmerich’s “The Day After Tomorrow.” Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy has already delved into some of the wrongness in the second “2012″ trailer.
This week on Stuff You Should Know Josh and me rounded out our “death suite” with shows on the world ending in 2012 and some truly bizarre ways to die. Talk about an uplifting experience!
The good news is that neither one of us, based on our research, believe that the world will end in 2012. The concept of this whole thing is based on the Mayan calendar, but it’s really just a bunch of hullabaloo to sell books if you ask us. Not only does the Mayan calendar not call for the world to end in 2012, but the event they are referring to is actually one to be celebrated. So much for that – good podcast though. Josh was on fire and we RETIRED HAIKU THEATER.
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