This is literally nonsense.
There’s another thing exponential functions do. Not in the mathematical world, but in the physical. They break. They accelerate ever faster to a practical ceiling that is far short of infinity, and then break.
But anyway, the development hasn’t really been exponential. Huge transitions in actual lifestyles occured during the two industrial revolutions, and they’re of equal or greater magnitude to anything that happened in the last 50 years. And when studying ancient Rome (the metropolis), it always amazes me how familiar it all seems.
The problem is the changes before us aren’t like the ones we’ve seen before. They’re not new gadgets or jobs or ways to get dinner. The prospect before us is not a Star Trek universe, where everything is still the same as it always was but with fancier toys. For example, we’ll soon have the ability to alter our emotion and instinct. The ramifications aren’t just that we’ll never be depressed, anxious, or grumpy, but the entire societal system could be destroyed or unimaginably altered. Overriding our instincts, which are often unpleasant and even more often to our disadvantage (nervousness, difficulty lying, altruism), would unravel humanity. That’s just one example.
Anyway, what will happen in 2012 is easy to predict. The internet will finally start doing its job. Remember the load of bullshit about the global village and global conciousness? Well, you’ll have to excuse that it took 20 years to get right, but eventually it’ll happen. That event will be a trigger of incredible technological progress (not that the current internet isn’t a huge boon as it is) and precipitate everything else.
I think those who dismiss the power of synchronous thinking, augmented perhaps by a real, physical (or perhaps metaphysical) force that pervades our universe, coupled with a technological progression of abilities, so that we may actually become capable of ‘seeing’ this force, are leaving themselves open to being left at the station when the train pulls out.
Modern quantum physics is on the brink of discovering that each ‘world’ surrounding our unique biochemical components, resonates at its own harmonic frequency…probably measurable in the synaptic fluids…and that the movement of this world among others is what chaos theory, relativity, and string observations are moving toward deciphering.
How convenient, that a network of ‘knowing’…communicating with vast numbers of possibly synchronous energy fields through internet connections…or perhaps through ‘nano’ connections as the century unfolds…is already in place. Wise and prepared and ready ‘elders’ already recognize that the harmonic resonance of individual ‘souls’ spreads ‘dust’ (see Philip S. Pullman…“His Dark Materials”)…and that dust moves across the universe…and that every 2600 years the axis of rotation of our world crosses its beginning point relative to the opposite pole of our galaxy and our sun. How much more elegant a ‘unifying force’ theory do we need?
The Age of Warriors is ending…The Age of Nurturers begins in the Time of Aquarius, 2013, following the end of the Long Count on the night of the Winter Solstice of 2012, following the balancing season of Libra. The hippies in 1968 (I am one of them) believed we were then at the dawning of the Age, but they were incorrect…astrologers have recognized that there was a glitch in analysis (this isn’t bs…open your minds, people)…after all, so much happened in 1968: Earthrise from Apollo 8; murders of RFK, MLK, GLR (George Lincoln Rockwel…actually in August 1967). But the scales were already tipping then.
Now is the time for people everywhere to realize that the old Christmas blessing was also incorrectly spoken and should be rectified:
It’s not ‘Peace on Earth and Good Will Toward Men’…it’s …‘And on Earth, Peace to Men of Good Will’.
Wrap your core around that.
goddammit.
I’m scared. 
Er, rockdocsteve, you’re actually citing the His Dark Materials fictional book trilogy? Citing fiction for scientific matters is perhaps not the best approach.
People cite the bible in threads here all the time.
On topic, many people seem to forget that the Maya couldn’t see into the future. So who cares what their calendar says about the future?
I’m thinking this may be what the hub bub is all about. Venus was important to the Maya. June 6, 2012 Venus will transit the Sun and be visible from Central America but at sunset. Hmm. Sunset is the end of the day. End of day = end of time = END OF THE WORLD! It’s reaching. But for some people it doesn’t take much.
And when it’s about something that isn’t Christian theology, they tend to get shot down for it. I suppose you think that it would go over well if I answered a question about Venus with quotes from early Heinlein “proving” that it’s covered with swamps and jungles ?
Heinlein of course was aware that a critical shortcoming in many humans is the substitution of a narrow, orthodox, or skewed perspective for a failure to even consider how to ‘grok’ something, let alone actually being able to ‘grok’ it; and when the subject is ‘knowledge’, or ‘rightness’, or ‘awareness’, then it can really get dogmatic, doctrinaire, and entirely too rational. Those who stubbornly cling to a purely rational analysis of life, or who see it as a contest that belongs to the strongest, or smartest, or richest, or most powerful, or any of that superlative crap, are destined inevitably to have their dogma run over by their karma. What goes around, comes around.
Many more artists and visionaries than Pullman (who happens in my opinion to ‘get it’, have expressed in forms as varied as prose (Henry James for example), poetry (TS Eliot or Walt Whitman for example), painting (pick one), or music (Gershwin, Ellington, Beethoven, Harrison, Lennon, Neil Young, Carlos Santana, and on and on)…that there is nothing funny about ‘peace, love, and understanding’. The entire concept is that somehow, the Universe ‘likes’ it when we, who have free choice, choose love over hate, peace over conflict, kindness over self-satisfaction, rightness of process over expectations of outcome. This doesn’t mean be a docile, polyanna who’s waiting for a miracle or something, it means understand that life goes on ‘within you and without you’, and that you ARE responsible for your brothers and sisters who share this planet with you. As Hillel said, ‘If I am not for myself, who will be for me?; but if I am only for myself, what am I?; and if not now, when?’
I believe that the Maya wise ones (and many other wise men and women of this or any other age) know that all things must pass, and that in the cycle of time and space, there may be points where concentric circles can touch, not at the boundaries or edges by intersection , but within and around the concentricities, by means of something yet unnamed or measured. Wait a while, and with the increase in nurturing and compassion that is likely to occur, as our world approaches this new beginning of an Age in 2012-2013, there may be many people surprised to find that the end of this ‘age’ is a good thing…For myself, I’m already on the train.
Gibberish, turning into pollyannism.
Perhaps the Mayan Long Count Calender is based upon Pythagorean Triangles and other Diophantine equations?
Another site:
Summation of the above:
The traditional example of the Pythagorean theorem has a 3[sup]2[/sup] in it.
Not only that, but if you make a right triangle twice as big, believe it or not, it’s still a right triangle.
3[sup]2[/sup] times 2 is 18.
The Mayan Long Count Calendar has an 18 in it.
This amazing coincidence must mean something Truly Deep.
I heard an interesting theory that seems to hold water.
Apparently the rollover date is not just a random day; it’s the winter solstice of that year. What’s interesting is that there may have been an astronomical reason for picking that particular solstice.
Back in the Mayan times, Polaris was not quite on center as the pole star. At the time, due to procession of the planet’s axis, Polaris was a few degrees off-center and thus appeared to rotate along a circle during the year, describing a black disc in the sky. That area was associated with Xibalba, the Mayan underworld (or “land of the dead”).
The milky way, meanwhile, has the Great Rift, a dark, mostly starless zone (caused by a massive dust cloud). Supposedly the ancient Mayans referred to that gap, which points roughly north-south, as the “road to Xibalba”.
The mayan calendar’s zero date and rollover date both align to a very rare (but predictable) astronomical event; they are the date when the winter solstice, which has the sun at its lowest point, sets directly on the Great Rift (or something like that; I’m not ENTIRELY clear on the exact event).
With the sun “travelling down the road to Xibalba” and thus symbolically dying, that date became an important event to the Mayans. Supposedly they believed the world would be remade or some such thing, with a new sun born the next morning to shine on a new world. Or whatever.
In any case, the sun interacts with the Road to Xibalba on that date, and that’s supposed to be why the zero is where it is.
Right on! Has anyone out there other than me ever heard of thinking ‘out of the box’. There’s seems to be a lot of ‘rational’ thinking here, and a dash of the intuitive is healthy lest we all become wonks. It adds the indispensable element of balance to the equation.
Incomprehensible New Age gobbledygook is neither intuitive nor balanced.
No, but it seems strangely topical. However complex and elaborate the math of a Mayan calendar may be, I gather it carried with it a mystical component. As loopy as New Age gobbledygoook is, it could serve as an analog to the, shall we say, creative state of mind that ancient people might have been in when they were making up their cosmologies.
Some people live in the real world. Others live in a world of numbers. Others live almost entirely in a world created by their own minds. Often these worlds overlap, or at least one can contribute to another. I doubt anyone can say how much it did so in any ancient person’s experience.
Just a thought.
Yeah, you’re on the train all right. When I was in college, we called it riding the Night Train. I’m not sure it’s anything to be proud of.