The End

Not that I believe any of this Mayan Apocalypse malarkey, you understand. The nutjobs who buy into this nonsense don't even seem to be clear on when the current cycle of the 'long count calendar', and the supposed destruction of the Earth attendant upon this, will occur - whether it's at the end of the current cycle on the 20th of December or the beginning of the next cycle on the 21st, and whether the precise instant of doom will be at sunset or sunrise on either of those days, or at some other point (midnight? midday?). Sunset on the 20th would seem to make the most sense to me. Yucatan time, of course. Which means we should be  fine in Beijing until.... about now.

The doomsayers seem to be overlooking the fact that the Mayan calendars include a 14th b'ak'tun, taking us another 395 years into the future.... and at least 5 more similar cycles after that.

So, I'm reasonably confident that the Large Hadron Collider has not destroyed the world yet, nor will any other global catastrophe have suddenly materialised, and that we are all still going to be here today... and tomorrow, and the next day, for a good long time yet.

This End of the World delusion is as old as human history, and it's never turned out to be true yet. Seminal '60s revue Beyond The Fringe perhaps summed it up best; though, alas, I can't find a video of the original performance, only this sound recording. However, there is this later version of the skit, featuring Rowan Atkinson, John Cleese, Eleanor Bron, and Ken Campbell as well as original BTF cast member Peter Cook, from the 1979 Amnesty International benefit show, The Secret Policeman's Ball.

But that's it for me. It's not the end of the world, but it is the end of my two blogs.


Well, never say never. I might possibly return to them one day. In fact, I shall be returning intermittently, surreptitiously, cheatingly, to insinuate a few additional posts retroactively into these last few weeks, things that I haven't quite found time for before the end. And I suspect I will launch a new blog at some point.

But for now, I've done most of what I wanted to achieve with these blogs (polished up my writing skills, become a bit more Net-savvy, made some interesting online friends, left a lasting record of the Froogian worldview...), and I've started to get a bit stale on it. Heck, it's just become way too time-consuming (I didn't even know about hotlinks when I started out; now I feel obliged to check references, and to review my own past posts to find and include relevant links: it makes the composition process much longer, especially when I'm plagued by such a slow and unreliable Internet connection in China). It's often been eating up an hour or more of my day - and that's far too much. Time to restore some balance in my life, cultivate some other hobbies.


So long, everyone. Thanks for reading (and commenting). Please continue to do so, if you happen upon this blog at some time in the future. I will still be monitoring the comments, and attempting to respond.