Anyone else getting sick of the "it's getting close to 2012" remarks in the oil gusher threads?

[Odin2005]

:banghead:

[Codeine]

1. Honestly,

I'm getting sick of nearly everything I read in the oil gusher threads. It's a never-ending display of willful ignorance, hyper-emotional thinking, hysteria, an a dogged determination that people who can't change their own oil or fix a leaking toilet are somehow qualified to disparage the efforts of the engineers working on a solution and hold forth with their own hare-brained schemes as though they've come up with a new and unique solution.

Maddening.

And yet I keep reading, which does raise the question of who the real idiot is. . .

[realisticphish]

2. they seem to think

that the average engineer who's working on it gives a flying fuck about BP's corporate line. They are focused on their job: closing the pipe. And I really don't understand why people think BP wouldn't want the leak closed as fast as possible. Their stock is already crashing; closing the pipe would be great PR

[SemiCharmedQuark]

3. couldnt agree more!

The hurricane thread is a prime example.

[SidDithers]

12. That was a bad thread...

though the Sorcha Faal article was good for a laugh. I love it when a google scientist posts an article that supports their position, without knowing anything about the author of that article :)

Sid

[DavidDvorkin]

4. Yes, but eventually it will be 2013

And I'm wondering what the Mayan calendar woos will say then.

[realisticphish]

5. the funny thing is

i read somewhere, don't recall where, that the mayan calendar actually started in 35 BCE, or something like that, which would put us WAY past the end of the world

[onager]

6. And some Mayan calendars go up to the year 4772 CE.

n/t

[DavidDvorkin]

7. That far? Good Heavens, they were even more advanced that I knew!

[laconicsax]

8. 3114 BC

It started with the creation of the world. Remember that the next time someone makes a 2012 end-of-the-world comment.

Why should we care about a prediction based on a calendar that says the world is less than 5000 years old?

[EvolveOrConvolve]

9. But you can't PROVE that the world isn't 5,000 years old

After all, you weren't there, were you? And the Mayans were, so obviously they know more than us.

:sarcasm:

[onager]

10. A Harlan Ellison story...

In one of his Glass Teat books, Ellison talked about going to a Star Trek story conference. So this would have been long before the Mayans became hip because of 2012.

The nephew, or something, of some studio bigwig had just been hired for a meaningless but no doubt well-paid job.

He decided to contribute some exciting story ideas...

"The Enterprise goes back to the dawn of time, and encounters the Mayans..."

Ellison interrupted and said: "But there woouldn't have been any Mayans around at the dawn of time."

The new Creative Person started to argue. After a few seconds, Ellison stood up and said: "I'm a writer. I don't know what the fuck you are." And walked out of the room.

[laconicsax]

11. Except I can.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7353357.stm

9,500 year old root system=Earth is older than 5000 years.

Checkmate Mayans. It was Thor and the Frost Giants all along.

[Warpy]

13. I was sick of that one the first day I heard it

since I went to the source and found out the Maya themselves expect the prefix of the old calendar to change and nothing else.

It's just like all the millennial fever lunacy only more so, the exotic nature of the calendar change making them even more crazy.

A date change and corporate psychopathy chasing profit at all costs to everyone else have nothing to do with each other unless it's the quarterly profit statement date.