2012

Surprisingly-many of my students have expressed real concern about the Mayan calendar and the alleged end of the world as we know it in just a couple of years. So, for the record: the world's not about to end, not at least on account of anything a long-gone ancient world thought it knew about last things. Here's the lowdown on 2012...



If college students are confused about this, no wonder younger kids are too. ("Children Waiting for the End of the World") Science education (and critical thinking, and philosophy) are more urgently needed at every level of our curricula than ever before.

Doomsday P.S.A.

2012 will not be the end of the world as we know it.

I feel fine. One less thing, eh?

Postscript: discussing this post in class today, a student insisted that the Mayans had been spot-on with their predictions so far. He wasn't saying they were right this time, but still...

And then, after class, a student-- an African-American student, no less-- lingered to inform me that he thinks Obama is the antichrist.

And in another class, a report on the 1997 Heaven's Gate suicide cult concluded that the group leader, who pronounced in a YouTube-preserved recruitment video his bizarre belief that he and his friends must depart this earth in order to"evolve" in the direction of their alien progenitors, was not obviously insane.

I don't feel quite so fine as I did this morning.