Mark your calendars

Aug 19, 2008 - 07:18 AM PST

The world is scheduled to end on December 21, 2012. That's according to the ancient Mayans and collaborated by Greek and Roman oracles who sat in caves filled with hallucinogenic vapors. Unfortunately, the originators of this prediction are unavailable for comment. Now I'm wondering if there's going to be a slump in Christmas shopping in 2012. I'll mark my calendar and if I'm still here on the 22nd, then I'll party.

I don't put much stock in prophecy Some prophecies come true because people who knew of them manipulated events to make them happen. Sometimes it's sheer coincidence when they're fulfilled. Prophets are seldom specific and concise in their predictions. The secret to successful prophecy is to be vague, the more ambiguity, the better. This way people can look at the prediction after the fact and fill in the blanks. Nostradamus was a master of the art of being vague. You can read almost anything into his quatrains. Just go through them, pick the one that best suits the event, and interpret until the cows come home.

The so-called Bible Code is really a series of word-search puzzles. Once the predicted event has occurred, you have the word list and you can find them in the matrix. But without the word list, it's just rows and columns of letters. If I'm not mistaken, the Bible Code is based on the original Hebrew text of the Old Testament so I get a little confused when some dates are in the Jewish calendar while other dates are in the Christian (Gregorian) calendar. What's up with that? Incidentally, the same principle has been applied to Moby Dick, indicating that Herman Melville may have been a prophet.

If a prophecy fails to come true, was the prophecy necessarily wrong. Does prior knowledge affect its outcome? Can events be manipulated to either prevent or ensure its occurrence? The Gospels seem to indicate that Jesus may have done that to set himself up as the Messiah. He was well aware of the Hebrew prophets and their predictions and may have used this knowledge to his advantage.

For now, I'm still planning to do my Christmas shopping in 2012. If the world is going to end four days before Christmas, there isn't much we can do about it, is there? Of course, people have been predicting that the end times are imminent for thousands of years, probably since the invention of writing. We're still here and I'm going to carry on as if I'll still be here tomorrow.