Posted by Philles on September 21st, 2009 | 0 comments
Yup, as always during the last week of September, I’m heading back to class. No more long days filled with being shamelessly lazy, no more holiday-jobs, no more travels, no more postponing work that needs to be done ‘before school starts again’ and no more Lisbon palm trees.
Now it’s time for attending classes, getting the occasional tasks and presentations done and basically mocking about until the exams are at my doorstep.
When I hear about all the people who are already working I realize I could be a lot worse off
Though I must say that this week isn’t much of a start. Today I went to an IMBIT-gathering for like… an hour and for the rest of the week I’ll have two classesone class (all other classes are cancelled)…
Yeah, the employees of the University of Antwerp need some more time to get the new Blackboard running I suppose…
Posted by Philles on September 15th, 2009 | 0 comments
Sounds impressive, don’t you think? I love hearing doomsday scenarios! It’s so much fun breaking them into pieces, pointing out mistakes and generally having a good laugh at them. Today, I saw this little movie on Youtube (here’s the first part out of five. You can follow the links to the right of the YouTube page yourself, can ‘t you?)
For the people don’t like watching Doomsday material, here is the summary: forget everything anyone else said in the past, the world is going to end in 2012. The 21st of December 2012 to be exact. Many great people and civilizations have foretold it!
I admit it is put together well enough to perhaps put some insecurity into your feeble hearts. Is it all going to end? And so soon already? I mean, it must be true since all those great people have prophesized it!
Yes, ‘those great people’… Let’s make a list, shall we? What great minds are telling me that I’m not going to live long enough to see my children grow?
The ancient oracles of Rome, Sibyl, and the oracle of Delphi:
Yes, some weird women in a cave. In their days of glory, they gave people vague predictions of the future, which were very often ‘right’. It is very easy to be right when you’re extremely vague but that is not the point now, is it? Also, as is said in the movie, these women lived in caves… filled with gas. So not only were they weird, they were high as well. My advice: don’t bother going to Rome or Greece, just ask the first drunk you can find to predict your future.
The Mayans: The Mayans had a very precise calendar up to 2012 and there it just stops. I ask myself this: who the f*ck needs a calendar that goes all the way to a thousand years from now? I won’t live that long, so why would I give a toss? Perhaps the calendar priest (or whatever) felt the same way and just said “F*ck it, I’m retiring.”
The I Ching: It’s a Chinese book / game. You toss some coins a few times, get a series of combinations, you make some extremely complicated statistical calculations with them and viola, we are all going to die in 2012. Sounds legit.
Merlin the wizard: Oh yes, my personal favourite! So the same guy (or same type of guy) that told king Arthur to take a sword from a stone and go find a round table in magical Camelot is now telling me when to die! Makes sense.
Mother Shipton: No-one knows if she even existed, but if she existed she was a crazy woman who lived in a cave. Probably sniffing gas.
The Holy Bible:
Off course they are right, did you expect any different?
Indians Native Americans: A little bird told them I suppose…
Web-bot: Which is a computer program that reads the entire internet to read our subconscious thoughts! If the Internet didn’t contain so much spam, weird porn and utter nonsense, I’d just might consider this as a reliable source of information needed to make such delicate predictions.
I think I’ve said enough by now. But if you are inclined to believe ‘prophecies’ like this, then do yourself a favour: go to the last part and listen to the last sentence (starting 6:44).
“The fact is, we can’t foresee the future. But what we can do is: we can live in hope for the future; we can have an attitude of optimism about the future; and that really is the message of what ‘prophecy’ is about.”
So, to remain optimistic, here are some advantages for when the world does end on that December day in 2012:
It will be quick. I’d rather have that than an ice age or something.
It will be a very cheap Christmas in 2012.
We will not be the only specie that dies. If I’m going down, at least I’ll take those annoying pigeons and creepy spiders with me.
The USA will become the new South Pole. Which means that all those nukes will be forever guarded by tons of ice, clever penguins, vicious seals and great polar bears. As safe as can be!
I will die knowing I never had to pay taxes (I will probably still be studying in 2012).
I’ll make sure I complete n°29 on my life list on December 20th of 2012.
It will all be okay eventually and Belgium will be a tropical paradise.
