Corn shucking?

Is that what you kids call powering-up the old lightsaber these days?

this is very interesting analogy. i like it...
i am going to tell this to my co-worker who is insanely in belief of the world end in 2012 he even was at the last point of quitting the job and closing his bank account and going in the world tour.
Ofcourse if you do not mind me sharing your thought.

Do you think its due to lack of worry? Boredom? There is enough to worry ('problems'), daily survival was not easy in past either.

I think it is used as abstraction layer to develop (albeit false) certainty, and to make the 'unfathomable' somewhat 'understandable'. Ie. we don't know what the future holds for us versus the world will end in 2012. The latter creates certainty, and allows one to build a live upon with certainty. This is also why, when challenged, a person of a cult (= religion) will vigorously defend their religion instead of listening to arguments. If only one aspect of their religion may be wrong, the entire basis of their religion (e.g. 'God's word is truth') becomes shaky hence a fundamental aspect of their life upon which that person built is also suddenly challenged, and the emotional shock that'd bring is by all means evaded.

The other reason is control of the masses, and destroying competitive cults one way or another. Also useful to hide the roots of your own religion if yours is based upon theirs. One can do that by calling them names such as 'witch', 'satanist', 'pagan', 'heathen' even though some of these words have originally an other meaning they now bear a different, negative connotation. Same for something as Swastika. Meanwhile, start the indoctrination at parental and school level. Brainwash early and you have them for life, and a parent would not want an other-religion for their child, so give them your own instead.

My crystal ball tells me lots of people with authority in their specific hierarchy will say 'I told you 2012 was BS' after we're in the year 2013.

Now integration of that with Rapier would be awesome does not include the death of 32-bit computing though.

Double check, discuss internally with colleagues to verify, discuss with military to analyze impact and solve issue. If world is doomed, sue the Vatican for violation of Human Rights plus everything else <fill_in_deity> and <fill_in_law> forbid me to, like here.

One could say don't release this to general public because it will destabilize society but one could also say they have the right to know. It is a difficult question to answer, very much related to ethics and self-interest. In some situations it isn't desired to teach someone (or whole society) a fact because the prospected outcome is seen as negative, and cannot be worked around to become positive while still teaching the fact although a marketing drone may be able to mitigate the negative effect as much as possible. Perhaps, the best solution is to find the best marketing drones on earth and discuss the matter. These top notch marketing drones tend to reside in politics...

I saw the movie 2012 and it makes me feel like this can never happen. The movie is too scary to be real life

Tell that to dinosaurs 65 million years in the past.

Lol That is funny

It's gonna be funny watching this movie in 2013.

If Roland Emmerich manages to release movies in 2010, 2011 and 2012, the world will then end.

LOL. I agree.