Are you one of those people who got panicky when the year 2012 started because you know that this is the year when the dreaded doomsday is set to happen? Well, I hate to break this to you but the world has ended already – at least it is what should have happened had some genius did not correct the calendar about 400 years ago and with the assumption that the popular ancient Mayan December 21, 2012 doomsday prediction is correct.
Let’s all rejoice now, however, and accept that 2013 and all the annual routines are coming, like it or not, because like damage control done by some analysts the moment they see that what they once have strongly forecasted are starting to go the opposite directions, I am now starting to see more articles about why the Mayan doomsday might not actually take place this 2012. One good reference I have is from one of my old textbooks which I brought with me to kill time inside a bank whose tag line is ‘We Find Ways’ but so far haven’t found the way to fix its ever long queue (but it is another long and sad story). Pages 58-59 of the book Heroic Leadership by Chris Lowney, has this very interesting information — which I read while standing in line for about an hour:
…By the sixteenth century, Easter Sunday was slowly but inexorably migrating toward Christmas.
Pope Gregory XIII asked Clavius to head a commission investigating the increasingly embarrassing problem. What was going wrong with the calendar? As it turned out, the actual solar year was shorter – 674 seconds shorter…What’s 674 seconds? Not much in a year, but problematic once compounded over centuries…
…In order to undo more than a millennium of compounded damage…Clavius’s commission had Pope Gregory XIII proclaim that in the year of 1582 the day after October 4 would be October 15. Even loyal Catholics had cause to grumble: their lives have been shorted by nearly two weeks.
I have actually underlined these while reading the book back in 2009 just because it tells about the origin why we now have the leap year and that’s it. Besides, during that time when I was still studying TSLEADER subject (under Prof. Lino Rivera who is currently DepEd Undersecretary) I haven’t even heard about any doomsday movie nor news about the end of the world other than what is written in the Revelation. But blame the movie 2012 and the hype surrounding it, December 21, 2012 became the dreaded D-day. Thankfully, as the abovementioned excerpt presents — if (and only if) the ancient Mayans indeed state the date December 21, 2012 in their prediction but failed to factor in the flaw that Clavius eventually corrected — the most feared December 21 has already past.
Yes, I know the feeling. No more modern Noah’s Ark, no more earthquakes of catastrophic proportion that will cause us to jump across gaping cracks on the ground, and the show Doomsday Preppers suddenly turns funny if not totally ridiculous. But who knows?
***
Mood: 2/10 Honks! (Friday afternoon. Watching TV with Marcus. Wifey still on her long siesta.)
Marcus Can Blog 