December 21, 2012!!!!!

[jryan]

Originally Posted by Gihgehls

Don't be so flippant and dismissive. I'm not going anywhere, so you don't need to say anything suggesting so. "most watched cable news" is fox news's slogan, so of course you're going to see it repeated everywhere. Btw, good job on taking yet another thread off course.

Gihgehls, Fox news is very misleading in that very slogan. It is true however (given statistics) that they are the most watched news network in primetime. If they would only say primetime in their slogan I would be content, although I don't much care for them altogether, but that is my personal opinion!

Jeremy Ryan

Edit: Statistically speaking, however, CNN was the most watched cable news network for the inauguration!!

[Gihgehls]

Originally Posted by jryan

Gihgehls, Fox news is very misleading in that very slogan. It is true however (given statistics) that they are the most watched news network in primetime. If they would only say primetime in their slogan I would be content, although I don't much care for them altogether, but that is my personal opinion!

Jeremy Ryan

Edit: Statistically speaking, however, CNN was the most watched cable news network for the inauguration!!

My only concern now is that you got the answer to the question that started this thread. Did you?

[jryan]

Originally Posted by Gihgehls

My only concern now is that you got the answer to the question that started this thread. Did you?

Not really, but that was dependant on someone actually believing that the world was going to end in 2012. I hear loads of people do, just can't seem to find any on this particular forum. Anyways, I am content with what I did get on-topic! Anyone else can feel free to comment!

Jeremy Ryan

[Bob.Kerns]

Originally Posted by Gihgehls

Btw, good job on taking yet another thread off course.

That would be me. Not Karl's doing, though you were both my trusty sidekicks.

What's up next? Shall we go take over a shopping mall?

[budsiskos]

Originally Posted by jryan

Not really, but that was dependant on someone actually believing that the world was going to end in 2012. I hear loads of people do, just can't seem to find any on this particular forum. Anyways, I am content with what I did get on-topic! Anyone else can feel free to comment!

Jeremy Ryan

i beleive somthing will happen, just not sure what.

[jryan]

Originally Posted by Bob.Kerns

What's up next? Shall we go take over a shopping mall?

I'm in!!!!!! But we need to make it a Simon mall as we both use the Segway for mobility (I believe you have said you do as well, I apologize if I am wrong)! That way we may be able to avoid charges by bartering to not press civil charges against them!!

Jeremy Ryan

[jryan]

Originally Posted by budsiskos

i beleive somthing will happen, just not sure what.

Fair enough! Do you believe that just something unusual will happen or do you believe that something will happen that will effect our lives? You know, I never believe any of this stuff, but it always intrigues me. I respect those that do and don't find them "crazy" like some will label them, but I am very interested!

Jeremy Ryan

[Bob.Kerns]

Picking a subset of the many fine points worth of further discussion, to keep the discussion finite...

Originally Posted by KSagal

Bob,
All that said, I do not agree on the wikipedia being transparent, or even trying to less biased...

In order for that to be so, given the examples listed, then the user would need to be aware of and able to access all the histories you state. While this is easy for some, it is not for others. My 3rd grader for instance, will read the first page, most likely not even in it's entirety, then call it a day. The finished product he sees may have just been spun, and will be spun back by your standards next week, but he does not know that. He will have been fed the wrong information.

Standards for citation of internet sources (of any nature) dictate that you indicate the date on which the information was retrieved.

"Transparent" means that anyone CAN, if they choose, look beyond the surface. While this is a Good Thing, it's not my point. My point is that education is a Very Good Thing, and our best defense.

In some areas, such as medicine and biochemistry, Wikipedia is getting to be quite good. The motivation for corruption is absent, and that helps greatly.

In other areas, it's a sideshow. Want to know about Obama? I wouldn't even think of looking there. Better off looking at his own web site -- it'd be less biased, and the bias would be more clear. Or McCain's.

What better test bed for training kids to handle varying qualities of information?

I quite agree that letting kids just grab stuff from Wikipedia blindly would be very, very bad. I'm just looking at it from a different direction -- the need to actually TEACH about the matter. You (and your son's teacher) see the problem. I see the teaching opportunity.

Originally Posted by KSagal

Unfortunately, we live in a society of sound bites and people who only read the headlines. My 3rd grader is unfortunately a better example of the norm than he should be.

Next is that since the wiki is on line, it does not get a fair and equal representation of everyone. It is as simple as that. Not all demographic groups use the internet to their respective percentages in society.

So, let me pose this: If you give equal access to the left and the right, is the result unbiased?

NO! Not even close. The most likely outcome would be extreme bias in all directions but the truth. You can conceive of that as being a bias away from the center, though that's not quite right. "Truth" doesn't live halfway between right and left. It's usually not even on a straight line between them.

The best tool we have for arriving at truth is the scientific method. And the heart of the scientific method is to be suspicious of your information, and its interpretation whether from another source or from your own observations. Always being open to the possibilities of a different explanation, but always demanding evidence.

Often, while the right and the left argue wildly, what is lost is that they both have good points that are being strangled. Big government causes big problems. Business left unregulated can cause big problems. Both true! And in each case, the party that talks about the cause, is frequently the biggest culprit. Look at spending and growth of the government sector under Republican control, as well as various matters intruding in private life. Look at the Democrats' record on financial regulation.

I think a big part of the problem is the "talking head" phenomenon. Somebody says something -- and it gets reported as news.

Statements, not facts. Not news. Unless it's news that the person making the statement is an idiot.

I see that a lot on Wikipedia, too. Often as a result of trying to "inject balance". Balance is NOT about giving "both" sides equal access to making silly statements. Balance is about presenting the subtleties and complexities that make an issue controversial, and the differing values that lead to a different way of looking at it. (Or sometimes, one side is simply wrong (or more than one side) -- operating off incorrect information. Transparency helps understand when that happens.)

Originally Posted by KSagal

With a printed source, like a print encyclopedia, the bias may be there, but it is consistant, and can be countered once and you are done. There is not as much need for daily vigalance to see if someone has corrupted the already

Absolutely, though print bias is not necessarily consistent from article to article -- it is certainly constant, and usually consistent from edition to edition.

I think Wikipedia is a HUGE success. It is a repository for vast amounts of information which would not be collected anywhere, and there's no substitute.

But it is ALSO a MASSIVE failure, for the reasons you cite. I hope someday it will evolve to better deal with such issues, but I don't know what that solution would look like.

Whether you see the success or the failure depends on where you look, for it is indeed, both at the same time.

On the whole, I am extremely positive about the effects of the internet, Google, and access to information in general. I think it is one of the most important developments in all of human history.

At the same time, it's something I care a lot about (and think a lot about), and I really get ticked off when things don't meet my standards. That's what you were seeing as my "negativity" in the other thread.

[GadgetmanKen]

I hadn't heard of the 2012 arguement, but was a bit concerned with the y2K problem wich was nothing to worry about afterwards it seems. What worried me the most was all the fear it produced and ultimately all the program debugging with businesses mostly from foreign programmers into very secure systems to prevent anything from happening at y2K. Which to me opens up a can of worms with some of those companies that made a trade off with very secure info in the hands of foreigners or perhaps unknown hackers and to what kind of stuff they got a hold of and what they could have possibly put into those systems to backfire or corrupt them at a later date.

Just like talking to someone at AOL help desk for instance. A lot of the times when I had a problem with my internet and would call them I would get a foreigner on the other end and either could not understand what they were saying or they would bounce my call around to someone else that also was a foreigner. I got tired of it and got rid of AOL for that reason. I have the same trouble with seeing new doctors who obviously are foreigners and can barely speak English but are specialists in this particular field. Yet I cannot understand them or their instructions and they quite frequently bounce around to different or new locations all the time. So if I cannot understand them, they obviously can't understand me and my health issues, so I refuse to go to them. What the heck is going on?

But on to Bud's post:

budsiskos is on a distinguished road

Join Date: Jul 2008
Location: riverside, mo
Posts: 94

Default
12 21 1012 has several factors backing it. the one you mentioned is the mayan callendar which only ends every 5126 years. the mayans beleived that at the end of the callendar, which happens to be based off of astronomical observations, there will be a dawn of a new era and the old will end.

the second is nostradamus. nostradamus was a 16th century prophet whose predictions can be linked to almost every major event in history such as worldwarII, the election of Obama, the Kennedy assassination, the atomic bomb, and nine eleven. the one that gets people excited though is one that seems to predict the end of the the world in 2012.

the third and probably most relevent is the polar reverse. the polar reverse is a theory based off of the coriolis effect where water spins clockwise down the drain in the northern hemisphere of earth and counterclockwise in the southern. some scientist beleive this same effect could happen to the rotation of earths core if we were to change hemispheres of the milkyway such as what will happen in 2012. remember how the mayans based their callendar off of astronomical events? well this is one of those events.
the problem is that if the core were to reverse direction, the magnetic poles would switch and basicly every bad thing that could happen will happen due to the speed at which it would switch. earthquakes, tsunamis, weather, volcanos, temporary loss of magnetic field around earth. basicly the movie CORE

First I think he meant 12 21 2012 not

12 21 1012

Second, I think nostradamus was well ahead of his time, and wonder what drugs he was on. I think its amazing how so many predictions have come true, but have to wonder if some are not mixed up with other events or are likely events that could or would occur anyway, like being generic things. I am not a expert on him, and have read only a few exerps about some of his predictions. What I find troulbling with some of them is that as old as his predictions as well as others is that with respect to time, their has been ample time to plot and plan a general impression or event to happen at or near such a time. Centuries mind you. And he had many prophicies yet to be fulfilled yet.

I liken this scenerio to watching a Star Trek series, and all the things that have been introduced in the series to help mankind and all the hardware and gadgets they created (or presented as real) . They were futuristic and things thought of for the future (predictions). And over the base time period of twenty years or so that the series has been on some of those gadgets and hardware and software, and stuff have come to fruitation and exist today as a result of that series. So in that respect I can see nostradamus predictions coming true, for time will tell

[wwhopper]

Noon this past January 20th was when the world began again!