It was, in a manner of speaking, tomorrow yesterday. That is not some sort of Dr. Whovian timey-whimey mumbo jumbo.
But it does sound confusing, and contradictory, so let me explain. The crazy conspiracy theory survivalist preppers and superstitious science-rejectors who went nutso over a failure to understand the Mayan calendar predicted the end of the world on December 21st, 2012.
Given the location of the international date line, December 21st started around 6 a.m. Central Standard Time, December 20th. A very large part of the planet is ahead of us in our experience of the standard 24 hour day. So as the marking of the change in date rolled around at midnight in my part of the planet, we finally got to the winter solstice, while the rest of the planet was clearly here.
I gave it a little extra time, after midnight had rolled over the part of the world where the Mayan civilization used to be, before posting this gorgeous shot from the Astronomy picture of the Day, courtesy of NASA, with its caption.
It only remains for me to say to all those crazy people who believe in things you don't understand, (to borrow a phrase from Stevie Wonder's song Superstition), that the world isn't going to end, tax cuts don't grow the economy, big government is not your enemy it is the size it needs to be for a large and complex country (more or less), Keynsian economics work and Austrian school economics do not, and the GOP and Tea Party are staging their own little mini-Armageddon and Rapture. Jesus did not ride on dinosaurs, and neither did any other humans. Evolution is fact, creationism is not. And global warming is real. An my personal favorite; the American gun culture of violence as both problem and solution is a failure, and history is moving on while that failed sub-culture thrashes out its death throws. We have passed that tipping point, finally, and we will move on to try to become a more civilized society.
To do that, you silly people need to ditch the emotional thinking of the primitive parts of your brain, take a deep breath and try to think critically with the cerebral cortex in your forebrains, instead of panicking and running around in silly circles like your hair was on fire, with your limbic system in emotional overdrive. That's not good for you; your amygdala will get all lumpy and swollen. In simple words, you lot need to engage in less emotional thinking, and replace it with more critical thinking.
That would be particularly true for the Republicans still in the House of Representatives who have embraced ideology over logic and reason and objective reality. In the words of the old comic strip Pogo, we have met the enemy and he is us; but more strictly speaking he is the You part of Us. The next eleven days will demonstrate our adaptability, our capacity for a response to threats that is reasoned rather than hysterical and superstitious, or our capacity for the self-destruction, economically of our government, and of our society be decisions about violence, or our planet by largely (but not entirely) man-made global warming.
Time's a-wasting; it was tomorrow yesterday.
But it does sound confusing, and contradictory, so let me explain. The crazy conspiracy theory survivalist preppers and superstitious science-rejectors who went nutso over a failure to understand the Mayan calendar predicted the end of the world on December 21st, 2012.
Given the location of the international date line, December 21st started around 6 a.m. Central Standard Time, December 20th. A very large part of the planet is ahead of us in our experience of the standard 24 hour day. So as the marking of the change in date rolled around at midnight in my part of the planet, we finally got to the winter solstice, while the rest of the planet was clearly here.
I gave it a little extra time, after midnight had rolled over the part of the world where the Mayan civilization used to be, before posting this gorgeous shot from the Astronomy picture of the Day, courtesy of NASA, with its caption.
It only remains for me to say to all those crazy people who believe in things you don't understand, (to borrow a phrase from Stevie Wonder's song Superstition), that the world isn't going to end, tax cuts don't grow the economy, big government is not your enemy it is the size it needs to be for a large and complex country (more or less), Keynsian economics work and Austrian school economics do not, and the GOP and Tea Party are staging their own little mini-Armageddon and Rapture. Jesus did not ride on dinosaurs, and neither did any other humans. Evolution is fact, creationism is not. And global warming is real. An my personal favorite; the American gun culture of violence as both problem and solution is a failure, and history is moving on while that failed sub-culture thrashes out its death throws. We have passed that tipping point, finally, and we will move on to try to become a more civilized society.
To do that, you silly people need to ditch the emotional thinking of the primitive parts of your brain, take a deep breath and try to think critically with the cerebral cortex in your forebrains, instead of panicking and running around in silly circles like your hair was on fire, with your limbic system in emotional overdrive. That's not good for you; your amygdala will get all lumpy and swollen. In simple words, you lot need to engage in less emotional thinking, and replace it with more critical thinking.
That would be particularly true for the Republicans still in the House of Representatives who have embraced ideology over logic and reason and objective reality. In the words of the old comic strip Pogo, we have met the enemy and he is us; but more strictly speaking he is the You part of Us. The next eleven days will demonstrate our adaptability, our capacity for a response to threats that is reasoned rather than hysterical and superstitious, or our capacity for the self-destruction, economically of our government, and of our society be decisions about violence, or our planet by largely (but not entirely) man-made global warming.
Time's a-wasting; it was tomorrow yesterday.
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Image Credit & Copyright: Stéphane Guisard (Los Cielos de America, TWAN) Credits: D. Flores and B. Pichardo (Inst. Astronomia UNAM), P. Sánchez and R. Nafate (INAH) |
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