That argument doesn't make sense for Mars - it doesn't have any natural resources that we need for our survival. The Earth is far from stripped, and even if it were to be stripped it would still have a great abundance of water in some form. The technology and cost needed to live on a stripped Earth would be far less than that needed to terraform Mars.
I don't care what the reasoning is for building colonies on the Moon or Mars - tourism is good enough to get me there!

No....the toys are...

the dogu(u) might be another parallel to these coinciding prophecies from various nations. The mythologies that cite them are not unlike the stories of the Ojibwe's Midewin Lodge and the "star people". This is pretty heavy stuff and i can't say I'm not kind of surprised to find parallels to my cultural teachings in this hobby... these sort of stories are everywhere, but its still very kool to me when they surface to my perception like this.

That really is what we are trying to determine is it not... That hasn't been established yet.

All I know is a hundred years later I'll be hanging out in the Temples of Syrinx drinking cider with By-Tor and the Snow Dog

The Mayan epochal cycles indicated the death and rebirth of "the world" in a metaphorical, not literal sense. The notion that the Mayans predicted "the end of the world" for 2012 or 2013 was IIRC generated by a crackpot pseudo-anthropologist in the 1970s, in the same milieu that had people taking crackpot Carlos Castaneda seriously. Nevertheless, the Maya at the peak of their classical era were mighty amazing in so many ways, their astrological sciences being not the least of their advanced accomplishments.

Why did Mel Gibson confuse them with the Aztecs? You'd think he could have afforded more astute researchers.

Yeah, this is one of those discoveries that, when it was first found, was so bizarre that the scientists figured they must be in error. The magnetic poles don't merely 'shift' (though the North magnetic pole, for instance, wanders randomly around N. Canada every year), they completely reverse! This apparently happens in a very short time frame, and is expected to wreak havoc. The gaps between these reversals have been as short as 5,000 years and as long as 50 million years, so there's no real telling when the next one will arrive.

But, curiously, the danger for us may precede any actual reversal. It appears that the magnetic field weakens, perhaps almost to zero, during these reversals. Earth's magnetic field now is only 1/5 as strong as it was when dinosaurs roamed, and it has dropped another 5% in just the last 100 years. Of course, it is only the Earth's magnetic field that protects us from all the cosmic rays which would fry us like bacon otherwise. So, we may be irradiated into virtual extinction long before the poles start wandering back and forth across the Equator.

Lots of the Gaia concepts view the Earth as self-healing. It does appear that population pressures, global warming, etc. make the planet seem likely to be a pretty grim place by 2100. But, all it would take is one half-decent plague to reduce the Earth's population by a significant fraction ... that may actually be the most probable outcome. Imagine how different the planet would be with 1/3-1/2 of the people gone. (Of course, attractive as that may sound, it may be largely because we always envision ourselves among the survivors, rather than among those whose contribution was dying.)

I can only hope that, when the plague does finally come, it comes in the summer and thus finds me in 95437 among all those crunchy, composting, vegetable-gardening, off-the-grid, self-sufficient folks, rather than coming in the winter and thus finding me in 33139 on South Beach, where the starving size-zero models would flay me alive within a week.

What you said about the population struck a chord with me....and then i remembered where i had seen something as drastic as what you just mentioned.

http://www.radioliberty.com/stones.htm

I'v always found these things stranger than strange.

another link that some might say is relevant:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080613/sc ... 0613180404

Anybody doing anything fun/interesting to celebrate tomorrow? My wife and I took the day off from work - certainly don't want to be working on the off-chance that the world ends, ha ha! Other than waking up with a bottle of Perrier Jouét we don't know how we're going to spend our "last day on earth" - probably just indulging in decadent food, but would like to "go out" with more of a bang. If it weren't for the weather I might drive out to the Stonehenge replica, but a 4 hour drive doesn't sound appealing if I can't comfortably sit inside the henge waiting for the aliens to come. Why couldn't the world end during summer in N.America!?
I'm a bit surprised that there aren't (m)any events taking place...

I will be celebrating my birthday, and also end of the world, in the middle of Manhattan! Where else would anyone want to be for the end of the world? And if the world doesn't end, at least it'll be an awesome birthday party with friends!

That's awesome! Happy pre-birthday!

We're most probably going to be on the road in a middle of a snowstorm. Might not be the end of the world, but it will look like it. ish.

celebrating the
Ideology and phenomenology of time
with
Derrick May,
Kevin Saunderson
and Stacey Pullen

You totally suck, where is this, Detroit? Aaahhhh best I'm getting is Alexi Delano and Joel Mull -- which should also rock, heheh

in Montreal : ^ )

@ banshee
yeah, I hope that it's mostly old-schoolers and people who appreciate the music
but i see nothing wrong with dancing
to the music of some of Detroit's original techno innovators

Three words: Age of Aquarius

It's not the end of the world, just the end of the Age of Pisces which transitions into the Age if Aquarius, or the age of enlightenment if you will.
I've seen an awesome video in this topic and so much more that can melt your mind; but it is a video worth watching when you will have the time.. I'll post it a little later on today after I find the video(s).