In 12 days...it will be the Winter Solstice for the northern hemisphere.
It will be the shortest day on the calendar; five days before Christmas/Saturnalia/Yuletide, Kwanzaa: it will be three days post the end of Hanukkah. It will be as it's always been.
Then, as it always has (and always will for some time), the days will start getting incrementally longer. Spring will arrive, temperatures will warm and flowers will blossom. We'll have to deal with the weather: post Katrina, post Rita, post Irene, post Sandy.
There is an eventual end of things just as there is an eventual end of us as living creatures.
Times arrow is orchestrated by entropy: the tendency for things to go from order to disorder, from hard, strong and young to the latter opposite as we age. Due to entropy, you can smell perfume sprayed out of a bottle (otherwise, it would either drop ungracefully in a lump on the floor, or never leave its container).
I am concerned...and saddened that so many young are led by this media hype to dread the future; to contemplate Hamlet's soliloquy. You have so much to live for...discover...enjoy. I lived with doomsday clocks and duck-and-cover drills due to a Soviet threat that now no longer exists.
I urge educators and parents to share the contents of the link below with your children. When the young are injured by myth as credible as Y2K was for spin, sport or ratings...it is no longer a game!
The surest cure to manipulated ignorance...is knowledge.
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The surest cure to manipulated ignorance...is knowledge.
David Morrison
Director, Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Universe
NASA Senior Scientist
There is widespread and unnecessary fear of doomsday on December 21, 2012. Some people worry about a Maya prophesy of the end of the world, others fear a variety of astronomical threats such as collision with a rogue planet. Opinion polls suggest that one in ten Americans worry about whether they will survive past Dec 21 of this year, and middle-school teachers everywhere report that many of their students are fearful of a coming apocalypse.
Director, Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Universe
NASA Senior Scientist
There is widespread and unnecessary fear of doomsday on December 21, 2012. Some people worry about a Maya prophesy of the end of the world, others fear a variety of astronomical threats such as collision with a rogue planet. Opinion polls suggest that one in ten Americans worry about whether they will survive past Dec 21 of this year, and middle-school teachers everywhere report that many of their students are fearful of a coming apocalypse.
SETI Institute: Doomsday 2012 Factsheet
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