The Perils of Prognostication
Wednesday, October 20, 2010 at 11:35AM 
If you've got December 21, 2012, marked on your calendar as the day the world will end (or if you have a smart-phone app counting down the days until then), you might need to re-think things a bit. Well, more than a bit.
Scholars who work on such things as ancient calendars now realize that they may have miscalculated the true date of the end of the world on the Mayan calendar by anywhere from 50 to 100 years. Mayan Calendar
True believers will not be swayed, however. They never are. And those who waste time calculating such nonsense will still haggle over who has it right when none of them do. This is a cottage industry after after all, one in which the more often you get it wrong and the wilder the speculation you spin, the bigger the audience you will attract.
Too bad the ancient Dutch didn't leave behind some sort of mysterious calendar . . . Think of how much fun we could have had with that!
Reader Comments (13)
You are way into this, far more than I am . . .
After the Yanks went 13-16 in September and looked about as listless as I have seen them, I picked the Twins and the Phillies. Shows that my prognostication skills aren't very good.
" When the Wooden Shoe Falls."
It is a sad trend that is happening in the ratings on T.V. regarding baseball. When a poor Monday night football game between Jacksonville and Nashville beats out the big brand Yankees in the playoffs, it is alarming.
In Arizona when the Cardinals are on T.V., they get a whopping 54% of the T.V. sets in the state watching 'em. Every Cards game is a sellout, but they will hold out a couple of thousand seats a game for the poor souls to purchase (I am one of them).
I try to attend at least three or four Cards games a year. Our great coach Ken Whisenhunt has done wonders with the franchise. The Cards are going for their third straight west division championship, including the Super Bowl two years ago. The fun of attending a Cards game here is awesome.
I believe that one reason that the Lakers are so popular in L.A., is that they don't have NFL football. If they did, they would divert a lot of attention from the Lakers.
How can you NOT root for Josh Hamilton and Cliff Lee?
Although I will probably root against the "don't ask, don't tell" Giants and their lady public address announcer, which is an insult to the game.
Could you just hear a lady P.A. announcer at a Yankee game?
I'm just glad I don't have to hear the annoying Darren Sutton and Mark Grace on TV for at least several months. I'd rather hear a lady over those bozos anytime. But I do agree with you: Go, Phillies. This means they will lose, darn it.
I'll take Vin Scully anytime. Both Gracie and Sutton are jokes; if I see re-plays of Sutton diving into the pool of the Stadium one more time in the middle of a game, I will kick my TV set in.
Or is there another team called the "Cardinals"?
They let both the Raiders and the Rams leave, and the NFL refuses to let any of their teams play in outdated stadiums like the L.A. Coliseum and the Rose Bowl.
A little off subject here; you might find this hilarious: The other evening at work, someone was flipping around the T.V. stations and came across the program, "Are you smarter than a fifth grader?" They had on a USC student. She had on her USC shirt and a whole cheering section from USC, actually waving big USC banners, etc., quite boastfully, I might add.
Anyway, the poor SC student didn't fare very well, and at the end of the program she had to confess that she "was not as smart as a fifth grader."
Poor "Old SC" has, indeed, really hit rock bottom!