The World Within a Sock, rickrolling, doomsday in 2012
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Back from San Diego, there was a lot to catch up on from the past two weeks.
To aid in my procrastination, a bunch of my favorite Flash cartoon sites released new stuff this month. This includes David Firth posting four short episodes of The World Within a Sock.
The selection of cool desktop images at Social Wallpapering keeps getting better.
If you haven’t been keeping up with YouTube rickrolling for awhile, you might not be aware that Rick Astley (“Never Gonna Give You Up”), Tay Zonday (“Chocolate Rain”), and Soulja Boy have been combining powers to become a single terrifying Interweb life force. Also, there is even a whole genre of videos documenting the rickrolling of Scientology protests. I think my favorite rickroll video of all is the Rickroll metal remix though. Here’s a nice overview of Rickroll in its various evil forms.
Let’s see, what other idiocy have I watched lately? Oh yes, various kinds of “doomsday in 2012” stuff. The world is coming to an end on December 21, 2012! You know, it’s the end of the Maya calendar (with scary “New Age” ramifications), the Earth’s magnetic pole could catastrophically shift/reverse (see pole shift theory and geomagnetic reversal at Wikipedia) due to galactic alignment, Planet X might return, World War III could begin, and shouldn’t we all be worried about St. Malachy’s medieval prophecy about the 112 popes before the end of days (we’re supposedly on #111 with Pope Benedict XVI), etc. The crazies continue to reveal themselves, just like in 1999. Also, if you’ve seen The History Channel’s “Decoding the Past: Mayan Doomsday Prophecy” (watch part 1 and part 2 at YouTube), this is an interesting read: “How Not to Make a 2012 Documentary.” Here’s an article by Dan Eden: “The Real Doomsday?” And check out the artbell user at YouTube for some even wackier videos and conspiracy theory commentary, including the forthcoming biometric mark of the beast system.
OK, enough about the impending Armageddon. It’s fun to think about sometimes though (as one accidentally visits less-than-credible conspiracy and/or evangelical websites while looking for reliable information). Just don’t start reading religious-themed message boards. Your head might explode.
The main thing that interests me about the 2012 hysteria is the galactic alignment, because that will happen regardless of what humanity does. There are lots of theories out there on how this event might impact/change the Earth, from minor anomalies to catastrophe.
So let’s move on to thinking about January 2038 and its status as the next Y2K. It’s the Unix Millennium bug. See Wired‘s “The Next Millennium Headache.” Here’s more information on dangerous dates for software applications. Incidentally, 2012 is not one of them.
In closing, did you see the total lunar eclipse last Wednesday? I got home from the airport right as it was entering the mid-eclipse stage. The sky was actually perfectly clear, which is unusual for this time of year in Oregon. Good times.