Yeah, I've encountered a fair-size amount of stuff on the end of the world on Dec. 21, 2012 (12-21-12 – not quite a palindrome).

Lotsa stuff. Earth gets hit by a rogue planet hurtling through the solar system, the whole solar system gets sucked into a monstrous black hole, miscellaneous interpretations of the enigmatic mumblings of Nostradamus, lots of source material for the wilder-eyed fundies to be found in the Book of Revelations, the earth is going to suddenly swap poles (flip over), causing immense earthquakes and tidal waves (not to mention a rough day on the stock market). . . .

But my real favorite is that the earth will be passing through the galactic equator, which will cause a variety of such things as the poles swapping places.

Now, considering that astronomers do not agree (nor are they particularly interested in) the location of the "galactic equator," partly because it doesn't matter a helluva lot where it is, and any attempt to ascribe a locate for it would be purely arbitrary.

And there are very few cases of members of the "Shellback Club" (sailors who have crossed the earth's equator) of suddenly winding up standing on their heads when they did cross the line, there is a certain skepticism about the arbitrarily assigned location of the galactic equator's actual effect on much of anything.

But the knee-slapper, is that the 12-21-12 Doomsday folk, tell us that the earth is some 110 light-years from the galactic equator (but they are a bit vague as to whether we are to the north or south of it), and it's when we cross this equator, that's when all hell breaks loose!

Well—considering that the speed of light is approximately 186,273 miles per second, and that the earth is currently traveling in its orbit around the sun at about 18.3 miles per second, and the whole solar system is moving roughly in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius at approximately 9 miles per second, I'd say that if we are going to cross a line that is some 110 light years away in sixteen days from today, we'd bloody-well better get a move on!!!

[Some years back in an English Lit. class—Shakespeare, to be precise—we got into a discussion of the various claims that Shakespeare didn't actually write his plays, they were written by Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, or maybe Woody Allen.   Someone asked the professor, "Since there is no real evidence to support the contention, why do some people get so wound up about things like this?"

She responded with a chuckle and a shrug of the shoulders, "Well, at least it keeps them off the streets."]

Don Firth

P. S. 'Course if it does happen, we won't really need to worry much about the "fiscal cliff."