Funnily enough, LiveScience [sic] refers to Ben as "our skeptic" which makes it sound like they only have one, which is a little disturbing for a science news site. To be fair, Ben is a Big "S" Skeptic and a card-carrying member of The Skeptical Community, Inc. So, saying he is "our skeptic" may be a bit like us being in a group of nine non-denominational christians and one Catholic. You have ten christians, but that Papist is "our Catholic".
Great. Stream of consciousness done. For now. Yesterday, Ben's smooth melon of a head produced an article entitled thusly: "10 Failed Doomsday Predictions". DOOM! It is well known that I am not a fan of the whole "let's pretend that 10 and random mulitples thereof are special numbers because we can the counting matches the ape digits we have on our uncovered protuberances, so let's make lists out of it" phenomenon. i will, however, let that slide. I also understand that Ben's got to put that "failed" bit in the title just to clarify things for the 2012 wackadoos. And, he put together a decent list of doomsday predictions to mock. My problem is with his introduction:
Here are 10 that didn't pan out, so far. . .
-Ben Radford in "10 Failed Doomsday Predictions"
Now would be the appropriate time to imagine me doing a seamless impersonation of Jon Stewart on the Daily Show.
So far!? The last prediction in his list was for DOOM! DOOOOOM! in 2008. Let me just check my handy-dandy Swatch watch. It appears to be the year 2009. Since the arrow of time only swings one way (its a Republican) for us non-subatomic particles, its a pretty sure bet that those particular DOOM!sday scenarios are not going to be "panning in an external location" anytime this ever. But Halley's Comet may still screw the photons being emitted by my LCD screen.
One thing the doomsday scenarios tend to share in common: They don't come to pass.
-Ben Radford in "10 Failed Doomsday Predictions"
Tend to share in common?! "Tend" implies that some but not all of the doomsday scenarios share the characteristic of "not coming to pass". Unless that means that Woody Hayes is a DOOM!sday scenario (which is debatable), the fact that we haven't actually had a good, worldwide doomsday in the entirety of human (narrow-sense human [hs], not broad-sense human [H])** history implies that "tend" should be sent packing. Please, don't suggest that our piddly, little ice age (Llanquihue glaciation, among others) counts as a DOOM!sday event.
Cro-Magnon Climatologist: I say, chaps. I fear the glaciers are going to continue to creep unabated into Central Europe over the next several thousand years. It will likely be a bit parky for some time, wot.
Unless he is suggesting that a prophetic Tyranosaur predicted the K-T event 65 million years ago,
Dinostradamosaurus: In the sixteenth age of the seventh sign, fire will fall from the sky and the land will be dark and we will all die. Frak. I need a drink.
I think we can safely say that DOOM!sday predicitons all share the "not passing" characteristic.
*Their digital age, "we don't use spaces" affectation, not mine (i.e.,[sic]).
**Don't worry, only Mike will get this joke, and probably only after I explain it to him tomorrow. Justin might get it. Neither will find it funny; but that is ok, because I formally have no way of knowing whether they actually exist as anything other than a construct of my own mind; and, therefore, their amusement is really irrelevant to both myself and the Universe as a whole.
