2012 vs New Moon
October 30, 2009
Differing opinions can be found online regarding the expected fate of the 2012 movie when it launches two weeks from now. The fly in the ointment is New Moon, the twilight sequel which is released a week after 2012:
…the Roland Emmerich action flick is currently trending for an opening in the mid $40 million range. For early November, that’s nothing to sneeze at. However, with a rumored budget in the $250 million plus range “2012″ is going to have to have strong word of mouth and a lucrative Thanksgiving weekend to sail into profitability. Sony’s biggest concern? Interest among older males is the same percentage as older males for ”New Moon” and it opens a week earlier.
But based on history it should do better:
Five years ago, the director’s “The Day After Tomorrow” premiered to ticket sales of $68.7 million, topping his previous best first weekend set by 1996′s “Independence Day,” which grossed $50.2 million in its opening. The moviegoer survey data connected to “2012″ suggest the movie might approach the premieres of 2007′s “I Am Legend” ($77.2 million) and this April’s “Fast & Furious” ($70.9 million). [LA Times]
Patrick Geryl Interview
October 27, 2009
Patrick Geryl, best-selling author from Belgium, was recently interviewed by the Camelot team of Bill Ryan and Kerry Cassidy. It is a long interview, but gives a great insight into Geryl and his ideas. Recently Geryl was part of a team that used ground-penetrating radar to prove that below a probable site for the fabled labyrinth are indications that it is actually buried beneath. Flooding of the site is problematic, but Zahi Hawass has said that the site will be excavated. If Geryl is correct, they will find ancient records of great importance.
Here’s the interview on YouTube:
Balloon Boy Dad Has 2012 Fears
October 20, 2009
Robert Thomas, an associate of “balloon boy” dad Richard Heene, has told of how Heene is a follower of David Icke, and he wanted his own reality TV show so that he can fund a bunker for when the sun explodes in 2012. According to Thomas’s attorney:
“Heene believes the world is going to end in 2012,” she said. “Because of that, he wanted to make money quickly, become rich enough to build a bunker or something underground, where he can be safe from the sun exploding.”
Last year Heene participated in a series of entertaining YouTube videos known as “2012 – The Best Evidence – by The Psyience Detectives”.
Gawker.com published an exclusive interview with Thomas, and here’s the part dealing with 2012:
But he was motivated by theories I thought were far-fetched. Like Reptilians — the idea there are alien beings that walk among us and are shape shifters, able to resemble human beings and running the upper echelon of our government. Somehow a secret government has covered all this up since the U.S. was established, and the only way to get the truth out there was to use the mainstream media to raise Richard to a status of celebrity, so he could communicate with the masses.
As the weeks progressed, his theories got more and more extreme and paranoid. A lot of it surrounded 2012, and the possibility of there being an apocalyptic moment. Richard likes to talk a lot about the possibility of the Sun erupting in a large-scale solar flare that wipes out the Earth. It got to the point where he was really pressing me, saying we’re running out of time, we’re running out of time, the end of the world is coming. And we have to take necessary precautions to make sure that we’re not among the majority that’s going to be killed.
2012 Feature in Sky and Telescope
October 18, 2009
Hollywood movie 2012 is providing the 2012 meme with a lot of attention, from such diverse magazines as Playboy (last month) and now Sky and Telescope:
Noted archaeoastronomer E. C. Krupp explains all the details, and the history of this mania, in the cover story of the November 2009 issue of Sky & Telescope, now available at a newsstand near you.
At Space Daily we get a larger taste of what the article covers:
If you believe what you hear, writes Krupp, “The ancient Maya of Mexico and Guatemala kept a calendar that is about to roll up the red carpet of time, swing the solar system into transcendental alignment with the heart of the Milky Way, and turn Earth into a bowling pin for a rogue planet heading down our alley for a strike.”
Krupp explains the realities, the many falsehoods, and the mixed exaggerations of astronomy and the Maya calendar system that supposedly combine to predict catastrophe. Krupp also reviews other recent end-of-the-world astro-manias: the “Jupiter Effect” doomsday of 1982, the “Harmonic Convergence” overthrow of the old world order in 1987, and the “5-5-2000″ planet-alignment catastrophe predicted for 2000. Interestingly, some of the same people and their notions were behind these erroneous predictions too.
“As we approach 2012, more and more professional and amateur astronomers are being asked about the doomsday scenario, so we want to help educate them, so they can inform the general public,” says Sky and Telescope Editor in Chief Robert Naeye.
“Dr. Krupp’s article thoroughly demolishes this pseudoscience drivel, and serves as an outstanding resource for scientists, educators, and the media.”
A summary of Krupp’s debunking can be found at Griffith Observatory.
NewsDay: 2012 – Not the End of the World
October 7, 2009
As the 2012 blockbuster movie edges closer to a global release, every level of news media is chiming in with a mixture of fact, pseudo-fact, mis-information and quotes from whichever expert they came across first. In early November it might become difficult to avoid the 2012 topic.
Archaeologists, astronomers and modern-day Mayas shrug off the popular frenzy over the date of 2012, predicting it will bring nothing more than a meteor shower of new-age “consciousness,” pseudo-science and alarmist television specials. Found at NewsDay (via AP)
The article points out that only one Mayan inscription specifically refers to 2012 (this is factual), and follows this with another fact that takes the wind out of the 2012 sails – there’s another inscription that mentions a different year: 4772.
The tone of the article, which has snippets of information from various experts, is that a Mayan doomsday in 2012 is purely a western concept with little to support it.
