With the U.S. unemployment rate at 10.2 percent, Obama told Fox News his administration faces a delicate balance of trying to boost the economy and spur job creation while putting the economy on a path toward long-term deficit reduction.

His administration was considering ways to accelerate economic growth, with tax measures among the options to give companies incentives to hire, Obama said in the interview with Fox conducted in Beijing during his nine-day trip to Asia.

“It is important though to recognize if we keep on adding to the debt, even in the midst of this recovery, that at some point, people could lose confidence in the U.S. economy in a way that could actually lead to a double-dip recession,” he said.

Fox News, which released a transcript of the interview, showed that comment by Obama on Wednesday morning and said the full discussion would be broadcast later in the day. (Reporting by Caren Bohan; Editing by John O’Callaghan)

NASA said last week that the world was not ending — at least anytime soon. Last year, CERN, the European Center for Nuclear Research, said the same thing, which I guess is good news for those of us who are habitually jittery. How often do you have a pair of such blue-ribbon scientific establishments assuring us that everything is fine?

On the other hand, it is kind of depressing if you were looking forward to taking a vacation from mortgage payments to finance one last blowout.

CERN’s pronouncements were intended to allay concerns that a black hole would be spit out of its new Large Hadron Collider and eat the Earth.

The announcements by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, in the form of several Web site postings and a video posted on YouTube, were in response to worries that the world will end on Dec. 21, 2012, when a 5,125-year cycle known as the Long Count in the Mayan calendar supposedly comes to a close.

The doomsday buzz reached a high point with the release of the new movie “2012,” directed by Roland Emmerich, who previously inflicted misery on the Earth from aliens and glaciers in “Independence Day” and “The Day After Tomorrow.”

In the movie, an alignment between the Sun and the center of the galaxy on Dec. 21, 2012, causes the Sun to go berserk with mighty storms on its surface that pour out huge numbers of the elusive subatomic particles known as neutrinos. Somehow the neutrinos transmute into other particles and heat up the Earth’s core. The Earth’s crust loses its moorings and begins to weaken and slide around. Los Angeles falls into the ocean; Yellowstone blows up, showering the continent with black ash. Tidal waves wash over the Himalayas, where the governments of the planet have secretly built a fleet of arks in which a select 400,000 people can ride out the storm.

But this is only one version of apocalypse out there. In other variations, a planet named Nibiru crashes into us or the Earth’s magnetic field flips.

There are hundreds of books devoted to 2012, and millions of Web sites, depending on what combination of “2012” and “doomsday” you type into Google.

All of it, astronomers say, is bunk.

“Most of what’s claimed for 2012 relies on wishful thinking, wild pseudoscientific folly, ignorance of astronomy and a level of paranoia worthy of ‘Night of the Living Dead,’ ” Ed Krupp, director of the Griffith Observatory, in Los Angeles, and an expert on ancient astronomy, wrote in an article in the November issue of Sky & Telescope.

Personally, I have been in love with end-of-the-world stories since I started consuming science fiction as a disaffected child. Scaring the pants off the public has been pretty much the name of the game ever since Orson Welles broadcast “War of the Worlds,” a fake newscast about a Martian invasion of New Jersey, in 1938.

But the trend has gone too far, suggested David Morrison, an astronomer at the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., who made the YouTube video and is one of the agency’s point people on the issue of Mayan prophecies of doom.

“I get angry at the way people are being manipulated and frightened to make money,” Dr. Morrison said. “There is no ethical right to frighten children to make a buck.”

Dr. Morrison said he had been getting about 20 letters and e-mail messages a day from people as far away as India scared out of their wits. In an e-mail message, he enclosed a sample that included one from a woman wondering if she should kill herself, her daughter and her unborn baby. Another came from a person pondering whether to put her dog to sleep to avoid suffering in 2012.

All of this reminded me of the kinds of letters I received last year about the putative black hole at CERN. That too was more science fiction than science fact, but apparently there is nothing like death to bring home the abstract realms of physics and astronomy. In such situations, when the Earth or the universe is trying to shrug you and your loved ones off this mortal plane, the cosmic does become personal.

Dr. Morrison said he did not blame the movie for all this, as much as the many other purveyors of the Mayan prediction, as well as the apparent failure of some people, reflected in so many arenas of our national life, to tell reality from fiction. But then, he said, “my doctorate is in astronomy, not psychology.”

In an e-mail exchange, Dr. Krupp said: “We are always uncertain about the future, and we always consume representations of it. We are always lured by the romance of the ancient past and by the exotic scale of the cosmos. When they combine, we are mesmerized.”

A NASA spokesman, Dwayne Brown, said the agency did not comment on movies, leaving that to movie critics. But when it comes to science, Mr. Brown said, “we felt it was prudent to provide a resource.”

If you want to worry, most scientists say, you should think about global climate change, rogue asteroids or nuclear war. But if speculation about ancient prophecies gets you going, here are some things Dr. Morrison and the others think you should know.

To begin with, astronomers agree, there is nothing special about the Sun and galactic center aligning in the sky. It happens every December with no physical consequences beyond the overconsumption of eggnog. And anyway, the Sun and the galactic center will not exactly coincide even in 2012.

If there were another planet out there heading our way, everybody could see it by now. As for those fierce solar storms, the next sunspot maximum will not happen until 2013, and will be on the mild side, astronomers now say.

Geological apocalypse is a better bet. There have been big earthquakes in California before and probably will be again. These quakes could destroy Los Angeles, as shown in the movie, and Yellowstone could erupt again with cataclysmic force sooner or later. We and our works are indeed fragile and temporary riders on the Earth. But in this case, “sooner or later” means hundreds of millions of years, and there would be plenty of warning.

The Mayans, who were good-enough astronomers and timekeepers to predict Venus’s position 500 years in the future, deserve better than this.

Mayan time was cyclic, and experts like Dr. Krupp and Anthony Aveni, an astronomer and anthropologist at Colgate University, say there is no evidence that the Mayans thought anything special would happen when the odometer rolled over on this Long Count in 2012. There are references in Mayan inscriptions to dates both before the beginning and the ending of the present Long Count, they say, just as your next birthday and April 15 loom beyond New Year’s Eve, on next year’s calendar.

So keep up those mortgage payments.

—

Credit Due: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/17/science/17essay.html

Months after its skipper was rescued at sea by the Navy, the U.S.-flagged container ship Maersk Alabama repelled an attack by suspected pirates today off the northeast coast of Somalia.

Back in April, the Maersk Alabama was boarded by pirates, who took ship captain Richard Phillips hostage. Phillips was freed after Navy snipers shot and killed three of the pirates who were holding him prisoner in a lifeboat.

This time, the pirates didn’t get that far. According to a statement released by the U.S. 5th Fleet in Manama, Bahrain, when a pirate skiff approached the ship this morning, the security team on board responded with evasive maneuvers, and blasted them with Long Range Acoustic Devices (LRADs) and small-arms fire. The pirates then broke off the attack.

April’s Maersk Alabama incident forced a rethink of counter-piracy measures, including embarking armed security teams. Shipping companies and their insurers had in the past been reluctant to have armed security teams on board, but as recent incidents have shown, sometimes the combination of the LRAD, firehoses and evasive maneuvers is not enough.

Take, for instance, the case of the cruise ship MSC Melody: An Israeli security team used guns and firehoses to repel the attackers.

And while the LRAD was famously used to repel pirates in a 2005 attack on a cruise ship, a team of three security operatives was unable to outgun pirates with a sonic blaster in a separate incident. They were forced to jump ship.

Vice Adm. Bill Gortney, the commander of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, praised the operators of the Maersk Alabama for their willingness to take on more-robust defenses. “This is a great example of how merchant mariners can take proactive action to prevent being attacked, and why we recommend that ships follow industry best practices if they’re in high-risk areas.”

The Maersk Alabama is now underway to its initial destination of Mombasa, Kenya.

UPDATE: The chief mate of the Maersk Alabama is now using the incident to advocate for putting armed mercenaries on all U.S. ships. “We cannot play roulette with the lives of the U.S. Merchant Marines, choosing to arm some and not others with various levels of expertise,” Captain Shane Murphy says in a statement. “It is imperative that we utilize private armed security consisting of American, former military special operatives that can consistently make the necessary shot to mitigate the RPG on each and every U.S. flagged vessel traversing the High Threat Waters. Anything less is not enough.”

Photo: Wikimedia

—

Credit Due: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/11/maersk-alabama-repels-pirates-with-sonic-blaster-bullets/#more-19613

A view from Spirit, which has been stuck since April. Scientists say the fluffy, loose soil and a small rock under the robot could be problems for the rescue. (NASA)

NASA scientists said Thursday that they had come up with a plan to free the stalled rover Spirit from its Martian sand trap but also warned that the plan might not work. If it doesn’t, the popular robot could finally reach its end.

Rover managers will send the first in a new set of computer commands on Monday in an effort to maneuver Spirit out of the fluffy, loose soil where it’s been stuck for the last six months. In a teleconference briefing for reporters, the Mars rover team said it was “optimistic” that Spirit would be able to resume its peregrinations across the Martian surface.

But in admitting that this is by far the most serious threat Spirit and its twin, Opportunity, have faced in the nearly six years they’ve been exploring Mars, the team members seemed to be preparing for the inevitable goodbye.

“This is bittersweet,” said Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars exploration program at NASA. “Spirit did the equivalent of falling through the ice and has not been able to pull itself out.”

Ashley Stroupe, a rover operator at the Jet Propulsion Lab in La Cañada-Flintridge, where the project is managed, spoke of “the tremendous bond” that has developed between team members and the computerized machines. The robots have gathered vast quantities of data about the Red Planet and its history while outliving every expectation for their survival.

Stroupe said she’d come to think of the rovers “as children you send off into the world. . . . We are very hopeful, but we’re very concerned.”

Expected to last just 90 days when they landed on Mars in 2004, the two rovers have survived more than five years and three Martian winters. They have surmounted not just planet-wide dust storms, but also technical glitches, including one that left Spirit with a gimpy front wheel that forced rover drivers to drive it backward. It was while maneuvering backward along the edge of a rocky plateau dubbed Home Plate — in the giant Gusev Crater just south of the equator — that Spirit got stuck.

The rover had broken through a surface crust, something like the brittle covering on a creme brulee dessert, and its wheels had sunk deeply into the sulfate-rich sand underneath. Unlike sand on Earth, Mars’ dry atmosphere and lower gravity prevents the particles from bonding, making the subsurface soil almost as fluffy as cornstarch.

After the rover got stuck in April, JPL scientists simulated the mishap with a sandbox and test rover. But tests to devise an escape route for Spirit were not completely successful.

“We haven’t found a clear solution for how to get Spirit out of its predicament,” said John Callas, the rover project manager.

For now, the plan calls for the rover to try to back out the way it went in. The first commands will turn the wheels six times before stopping so scientists can assess the situation.

Besides the fluffy soil, rover scientists are concerned about a small rock under the robot. Further efforts to free the rover could cause the undercarriage to snag on the rock. Tests showed that if that happens, the wheels will lose traction and the rover could become permanently stuck.

In such a scenario, Spirit could still do science, but as a station, not a rover. Also, without the ability to move into a position that gets good sunlight to wait out the harsh Martian winter, its batteries could be drained, dooming the robot.

Even if the initial efforts Monday are unsuccessful, operators will continue their efforts to salvage Spirit at least through February, when a NASA review panel is scheduled to discuss the rovers’ fate. If Spirit is still stuck, the panel could call off the rescue.

“If Spirit cannot make the great escape from this sand trap, this might be where Spirit ends its adventure on Mars,” McCuistion said.

Over their nearly six years of exploration on Mars, the two rovers have helped unravel the planet’s geological past. They also found evidence that water once flowed on the surface.

Opportunity is currently on the opposite side of Mars driving toward a large crater called Endeavor.

The rovers have attracted a worldwide fan base that has followed their every move and hardship. There’s even a “Free Spirit” campaign, which has its own logo emblazoned on T-shirts sold at the JPL store.

john.johnson@latimes.com

Well, well, well. What do we have here? The parents of balloon boy Falcon Heene have decided to plead guilty to charges of attempting to influence a public servant, a felony, and false reporting to authorities. They are expected to face nothing more than probation by making the guilty plea, which is hard to believe after such an incredible amount of hysteria was caused, as well as media hype and wasting of huge amounts of public resources in the search for the “missing” boy. The most serious of the charges could have led to a maximum six-year prison sentence, so how such a plea bargain was arrived at with prosecutors is hard to fathom.

What I’m hearing is that you can hide your kid in the attic, tell the police that he has flown off in a hot air balloon, watch sherriff’s helicopters and squad cars chase the balloon, necessitate flights at Denver International being routed away from the area and then you continue to insist that this really happened…and pretty much get away with it? In fact, if Falcon Heene, the youngster, didn’t say on national television that this was “all for the show” then who knows how much longer these lunatic parents would have been in the national limelight?

C’mon now…..they have to pay some sort of price with prison time and community service. And should parents be allowed to raise children in this crazy environment? What will they do next? To add insult to injury the mother, Mayumi Heene is apparently an illegal immigrant, so their lawyer is doing what he can to help them retain custody of the three children and keep her in the U.S. rather than be deported.

Obviously, to be continued…..

UPDATED INFORMATION: Police investigators say that they hope to soon question an associate of Richard Heene, father of the Balloon Boy, after e-mails surfaced indicating that the apparent hoax was discussed by the two men months ago. Heene indicated he planned a media event to help promote a reality show. While Heene’s attorney said today that his client is “absolutely innocent”, Denver resident Robert Thomas apparently has sold e-mail between him and Richard Heene to gawker.com which will portray Falcon Heene’s dad as a mad scientist carrying out various experiments.

Thomas provided the website a proposal that said, “This will be the most significant UFO-related news event to take place since the Roswell crash of 1947, and the result will be a dramatic increase in local and national awareness about the Heene Family, our Reality Series, as well as the UFO phenomenom in general”. (Check back for more updates as this story continues to evolve.)

Police in Fort Collins, Colorado have determined that last week’s media frenzy over a helium balloon that authorities initially feared carried a six-year-old boy was actually a concocted plan by the parent’s of the boy to gain attention. Various charges are pending that could send the parents to jail for several years and/or fine them up to half a million dollars.The balloon chase last Thursday included military helicopters and dozens of law enforcement vehicles.

Up until the time that Falcon Heene, the youngster who police initially thought had floated away in his family’s home made balloon, told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that his dad said ” we did this all for the show”, it was believed that the incident was really a case of a missing child. Everyone was overwhelmingly relieved when Falcon was found hiding in the attic above the garage at home. He said that he hid because he felt he would get in trouble with his parents for allowing the tethered balloon to take flight.

Yesterday, Sheriff Jim Alderden said that the parents, Richard and Mayumi Heene had planned last Thursday’s escapade for at least two weeks as they sought to create a television reality show about them. The family was featured in a segment of ABC’s “Wife Swap” and had met in acting school.

The sheriff will recommending that criminal charges of conspiracy, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, attempting to influence a public servant and making a false report be filed against the couple. While Falcon and his two older brothers were “100% involved”, it is unlikely that they will be charged.

The Heene’s describe themselves as stormchasers, but in reality Richard Heene has a high school education and lays tile as a contract employee. He maintains a “nutty professor” image on the outside but according to the sheriff “he may be nutty, but he’s not a professor.”

Visit http://www.worldfuturecouncil.org/pact_website.html for further information

A new online platform launched today by the World Future Council provides policymakers throughout the world with the right tools to unleash sustainable energy development. The new PACT website (www.onlinepact.org) embraces eight new policy recommendations on energy efficiency.

Submitted on 11/11/09, 08:31 AM

Hamburg/London, November, 11th 2009: A massive uptake of renewable energy and the application of efficient technologies is the key to fighting climate change, creating jobs and building future economies. A new online platform launched today by the World Future Council provides policymakers throughout the world with the right tools to unleash sustainable energy development in their country. A catalogue of policies and regulations to accelerate the deployment of renewable energy and to reduce the overall energy demand now helps Parliamentarians to create a better policy framework. The PACT website www.onlinepact.org that was originally launched in November 2007 has been completely rebuilt and embraces eight new policy recommendations on energy efficiency.

“It is eye-opening to realise that replacing a single 100 Watt traditional light bulb with an energy saving model results in a saving of C02 emissions that equals driving a fuel efficient car from India to Germany. If all light bulbs worldwide were replaced global CO2 emissions would be reduced by 2%. This equals more than 50% of global aviation emissions per annum”, says Dr. Axel Bree, Policy Officer and chief editor of the PACT website.

Bree: “Our new website has been explicitly designed for policymakers. We want to sensitise them to the urgent need to develop sound renewable energy policies and increase energy efficiency but also emphasise that, by promoting the renewable energy transition, thousands of jobs can be created and money can be made. The unique aspect is that we don’t leave it at that but combine this information with precise policy recommendations and suggestions of how to implement them”.

The PACT website is divided into a section that provides ‘a one step clearing house’ for designing ‘Feed-in Tariffs’ as best policies to accelerate the development of renewable energy and into a series of eight sound policy recommendations to reduce the overall energy demand. There are policy examples for the use of cooking stoves, which do not emit CO2 or other hazardous fumes, but produce biochar, an organic, carbon-storing fertilizer. Smart electricity meters inform consumers about how they could save up to 10% of their electricity costs by running the washing machine at off-peak times or turning off appliances on stand-by. Congestion charges can mitigate traffic problems and curb gasoline consumption in large cities while taking in funds for public transport and cycling lanes.

All policy recommendations listed on the PACT website are the result of in-depth research by the WFC. They meet the WFC Future Justice criteria that are designed to thoroughly check policies for unintended negative consequences. Case studies prove that the recommended

policies can work and have worked successfully in the past. The website is complemented by a new booklet that can be downloaded at onlinepact.org/1552.html or ordered from the WFC.

World Future Council:
The World Future Council brings the interests of future generations to the centre of policy making. Its up to 50 eminent members from around the globe have already successfully promoted change. The Council addresses challenges to our common future and provides decision-makers with effective policy solutions. In-depth research underpins advocacy work for international agreements, regional policy frameworks and national lawmaking and thus produces practical and tangible results. The World Future Council Foundation is registered in Hamburg.

Media contact:

Anne Reis
Media & Communications Officer

Phone: +49 (0)40 30 70 914-16
Email: anne.reis@worldfuturecouncil.org

http://www.worldfuturecouncil.org

Columbia Pictures

Government scientists should be trusted, obviously

By CHRIS NEEDHAM

vie “2012″ worked you to a tizzy?  Are you wandering around the house, fretting about the Mayan calendar?  Are you hoarding tin foil, constructing not just hats, but entire suits, including wee little ones for the 14 cats you own?  If so, you’re a nutball.

And that’s why the rest of us are all thankful that the government is ready to respond to all citizens, sane and insane alike.

The good folks at NASA — who’ve brought us such innovation as Tang and those pens that write upside-down — have outdone themselves with their latest effort.  They recently posted a 2012 FAQ: your guide to the end of the world.

“Question (Q): Are there any threats to the Earth in 2012? Many Internet websites say the world will end in December 2012.
Answer (A): Nothing bad will happen to the Earth in 2012. Our planet has been getting along just fine for more than 4 billion years, and credible scientists worldwide know of no threat associated with 2012.”

Oh yeah, but what about IN-credible scientists?  What do they say?  I mean, I was just reading this thing on the internet about how the Mayans predicted that real government scientists would try to dupe the unsuspecting public into tranquility before the world exploded, just like in the movie.

“Q: How do NASA scientists feel about claims of pending doomsday?
A: For any claims of disaster or dramatic changes in 2012, where is the science? Where is the evidence? There is none, and for all the fictional assertions, whether they are made in books, movies, documentaries or over the Internet, we cannot change that simple fact. There is no credible evidence for any of the assertions made in support of unusual events taking place in December 2012.”

Oh, but Mr. Scientist — Mr. Can’t-Be-Trusted Government Scientist, that is — can you show us any evidence that there WON’T be doomsday in 2012.  Your puny calls for facts and so-called “evidence” ring hollow until you provide said “evidence” for yourself.  Prove to us that there ISN’T an invisible planet tracking silently behind the sun, waiting to emerge in a few years to destroy Earth.

On one hand, we have government scientists telling us we’ll be OK.  On the other hand, we’ve got a capitalist visionary like Roland Emmerich, director of the movie, telling us something else.  Who’s got more at stake?  The scientists in their cushy taxpayer-funded jobs or the director who stands to lose millions of his business’ money should the movie lack credibility.

Hmm…  Maybe those tin-foilers aren’t so crazy after all.

—

Credit Due: http://www.nbcwashington.com/around-town/events/NASAs-Guide-to-Doomsday-69650687.html

GENEVA — A rare Panamanian tree frog, a rodent from Madagascar and two lizards found only in the Philippines are among over 17,000 species threatened with extinction, a leading environmental group said Tuesday.

The Rabb’s fringe-limbed tree frog, only discovered four years ago, is one of 1,895 amphibian species that could soon disappear from the wild because of deforestation and infection, the International Union for Conservation of Nature said.

The Switzerland-based group surveyed 47,677 animals and plants for this year’s “Red List” of endangered species, determining that 17,291 of them are at risk of extinction.

More than one in five of all known mammals, over a quarter of reptiles and 70 percent of plants are under threat, according to the survey, which featured over 2,800 new species compared with 2008.

“These results are just the tip of the iceberg,” said Craig Hilton-Taylor, who manages the list. He said many more species that have yet to be assessed could also be under serious threat.

The only mammal added to the list this year was the Eastern Voalavo, a rodent that lives in the mountainous forests of Madagascar. IUCN classified it as “endangered” — two steps from extinction in the wild — because its habitat is being destroyed by slash-and-burn farming.

The Red List already includes species such as the tiger, of which only 3,200 are thought to exist in the wild and whose habitat in Asia is steadily shrinking due to encroachment by humans. Governments and international conservation bodies use the list as guidance when deciding which species to place under legal protection.

The group added almost 300 reptiles this year, including the Panay monitor lizard and the sail-fin water lizard, both of which are hunted for food and threatened by logging in their native Philippines.

IUCN also surveyed 3,120 freshwater fishes, up 510 species from last year, and found 1,147 of them threatened with extinction. They include the brown mudfish in New Zealand, whose wetland habitats have been virtually destroyed through drainage schemes, irrigation and land development.

Some species have recovered thanks to conservation efforts, the group said. The Australian grayling, a freshwater fish, graduated from “vulnerable” to “near threatened” thanks to fish ladders at dams and other protection measures.

But for many other species, conservation efforts are likely to come too late.

The Kihansi spray toad of southern Tanzania is now thought to be extinct in the wild. A dam upstream of Kihansi Falls has dried up the gorge where it lived, and an aggressive fungal disease known as chytridiomycosis appears to have pushed the toad population over the edge, the group said.

The same fate could soon befall the unusually large Rabb’s fringe-limbed tree frog, which glides through the forest using its big webbed feet to steer safely to the ground. It is the only known frog species where the tadpoles feed off skin shed by the male while he guards the young.

The chytrid fungus that causes chytridiomycosis reached central Panama in 2006, a year after scientists first discovered the tree frog. Since then the fungus — believed to be spread by international trade and global warming — has virtually wiped out the wild frog population.

“Only a single male has been heard calling since,” IUCN said.

Zoo Atlanta scientist Joseph Mendelson, part of the group that identified the frog as a distinct species, said it is likely that dozens or even hundreds of other amphibians have become or are going to be extinct before they are even discovered.

“This one we caught right before it went off the planet, but other species surely we didn’t catch in time,” Mendelson told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

“When you name a new species you’re attached to it, and when that species disappears so quickly it’s impossible not to have feelings associated with that,” he said. “I’m pretty sad to be honest, really sad.”

• IUCN Red List: http://www.iucnredlist.org/

By Joel Achenbach Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 16, 2009

A scene from the disaster film “2012.” (Copyright 2009 Columbia Tristar Marketing Group)

The world is coming to an end.

In, like, 4 or 5 billion years. The sun will get old and cranky and eventually immolate the entire planet.

The world, however, is not coming to an end on Dec. 21, 2012, contrary to the viral Internet rumor propounded by pseudo-scientists, hoaxers, Hollywood movie promoters and assorted void-between-the-ears people who wouldn’t recognize a scientific fact if it tried to abduct them.

The notion that 2012 heralds the End of Time has something to do with a mysterious Planet X that will supposedly hurtle into, or perhaps merely perturb, Earth. Also, there might be geomagnetic storms, a Pole Reversal, and a newfound unsteadiness in the planet’s crustal plates. All of that, or variations thereof, can be studied in depth in scores of books now jostling for eschatological primacy with such titles as “Apocalypse 2012,” “The World Cataclysm in 2012″ and “How to Survive 2012.”

This is no joke to David Morrison, senior scientist for NASA’s Astrobiology Institute. He’s counted 200 different books for sale about 2012. As the author of an online feature called Ask an Astrobiologist, he’s gotten nearly 1,000 e-mails from people who think something dire is about to befall the planet. One teenager wrote to Morrison that he’d rather commit suicide than see the world destroyed. Many of the letters, Morrison said, presume that the government is covering up the imminent catastrophe. Letters begin, “I know you can’t tell me the truth, but . . . “

In an article published in the latest issue of Skeptic magazine, Morrison explains that the 2012-as-Doomsday meme represents a convergence of New Age mysticism and Hollywood opportunism. It is, in short, a hoax.

The idea draws some of its inspiration from the Mayan “long count” calendar. The date of Dec. 21, 2012, marks the end of a 394-year cycle of time known to the Maya as Baktun 13. But there is no reason to think that the Maya believed this was the end of the world as we know it.

Another inspiration, apparently, is author Zecharia Sitchin, whose books detail a cosmogony featuring the mysterious planet Nibiru, unknown to modern science but plain as day to ancient Sumerians. This planet, readers are told, has a highly elliptical orbit of the sun, and enters the inner solar system every 3,600 years. A collision between Nibiru and another planet supposedly created both Earth and the asteroid belt. Also there were ancient astronauts from Nibiru who came to Earth and created modern humans.

Ensuring that no bad idea goes unexploited, Sony Pictures has leaped into the mix with a $200 million blockbuster, “2012,” coming out on Friday the 13th of November. The trailers show the entire planet coming unglued. The movie doesn’t explain why, exactly, but we do see that Los Angeles falls into the sea. A tsunami obliterates a Tibetan monastery high in the Himalayas. The dome of St. Peter’s tumbles into the square and smushes a throng of Christians. An aircraft carrier crashes into the White House (big wave).

The director is Roland Emmerich, promulgator of cinematic calamity in such flicks as “Independence Day” and “The Day After Tomorrow.” This time, what he throws at Earth makes each of his previous efforts look like a Merchant Ivory film.

In promoting the movie,

Sony has used the marketing

slogan “2012: Search for It.” Someone Googling “2012″

will find plenty of doomsaying. Sony has set up a fake Web site

for something called the Institute for Human Continuity — http://www.instituteforhumancontinuity.org — which uses scientific-sounding language to detail the upcoming shredding, torching and obliterating of the world from so many directions it makes your head spin (”large amounts of solar radiation will bombard the Earth and heat up the molten, semi-liquid layers beneath the lithosphere, thus allowing the crust to shift more easily”).

The reality about the universe is that it is, in fact, wild and woolly, with all manner of exploding stars, gamma ray bursts, black holes, not to mention comets that plunge toward the sun and rogue asteroids that just maybe have Earth’s number. But it is simultaneously a fact that Earth is in a quiescent part of the galaxy, a rural place where not a whole lot happens in any given epoch. Cosmologically, we’re in North Dakota.

As with all pseudo-science, the real science provides a platform from which the human imagination soars to great heights of irrationality. For example, although there is no Planet X, or Nibiru, there is, indeed, a dwarf planet beyond Pluto called Eris. It’s in a stable orbit and is not coming anywhere near Earth. If there was a Nibiru heading our way, one of the 100,000 amateur astronomers on Earth would have spotted it long ago.

“You have to be pretty dumb not to realize that Nibiru is a no-show,” Morrison says.

Astronomer Edward Krupp of the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles debunks “2012″ in the November issue of Sky & Telescope magazine, lumping it in with previous cosmic prophesies, such as the “Harmonic Convergence” of 1987. That was the one where New Agers gathered at geological “acupuncture points” to create, as Krupp reports, a “synchronized and unified bio-electromagnetic collective battery.”

Alternative astronomy has a long history, including the celebrated revelations of Immanuel Velikovsky, whose book “Worlds in Collision” posited that various planets were careening all over the solar system a few thousand years ago and causing biblical phenomena (the parting of the Red Sea, the plagues of toads, etc.).

Morrison calls this sort of thing “cosmophobia.” His efforts to head off 2012 paranoia is ironic in a sense: He’s been a pioneer in the study of near-Earth objects that might potentially pose a hazard to the planet. In recent years, astronomers have mapped all the asteroids near Earth that are two miles in diameter or larger, Morrison said. Nothing seen so far poses an imminent threat to Earth.

One near-Earth asteroid, named Apophis, will pass near Earth in 2029 and again in 2036 and 2068, but recent calculations of its orbit show that it won’t get closer to the planet than about 18,000 miles. And Apophis isn’t really that big — about the length of about 2 1/2 football fields.

“It would basically take out a small state,” Morrison said.

Disastrous. But not Nibiru-disastrous. For that, you’ll need to see the movie.

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Credit Due : http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/15/AR2009101503745.html?hpid=topnews

As we reported today, the Governator stopped by Oracle OpenWorld to “pump up” the tech industry and sing the praises of California’s contributions toward innovation.

But it wasn’t all serious talk. Schwarzenegger joked about his wife being caught in photos recently talking on her cell phone illegally while driving. He asked the crowd to find a solution for her so she wouldn’t look like she’s still in the “stone age.”

But he said he’s in tricky no-win situation, trying to look tough for voters while not coming down too hard on his wife.

“If I don’t create action, the voters get upset but if I create action and stop her, then I get no action,” he said.

More laughs came when Schwarznegger recounted how the tech industry helped his movie career. Schwarzenegger said it was technology that allowed him to appear as a Terminator blowing up a T-1000 Terminator. And it was technology that also allowed him to appear like he was saving his daughter while flying a Harrier jet in True Lies. And it enabled him to fight off a huge snake in Conan the Barbarian.

“I could have never done that and looked so studly without green screen technology,” Schwarzenegger said.

And in perhaps a wink to his acknowledged steroid use at the beginning of his career, he said it was technology that helped him during his body building days.

“If I wouldn’t have come to America and used the technology that was available in equipment and also food supplements, I would have never won those world championships in body building,” he said to laughter.

But he said he was most excited about visiting OpenWorld because he’s a big techie himself.

“I love technology, it doesn’t matter if it’s high tech or bio tech, or if it’s nano tech or green tech or clean tech. All of the techs I just love,” he said.