The Shard will be Europe's tallest mixed-use building - another tall building due for completion in 2012.
Excellent infographic from Information is Beautiful - 2012: End of the World?
Good piece by Mark Dery in h+ Magazine called 2012: Carnival of Bunkum.
I just watched a NOVA/PBS show on YouTube called Cracking the Maya Code.
Associated Press writer Mark Stephenson spoke to a Mayan elder who is fed up with 2012 nonsense, insisting that Mayans never claimed the world would end then.
NASA has set up a Singularity University with Dr. Ray Kurtzweil as Chancellor.
I just watched a short video posted on YouTube by sarastarlight. It talks about the fall of the Aztec civilisation which commenced in 1590, heralded by the appearance of a comet which they had predicted. They foresaw the coming of a plumed serpent and annihilation by the god of the cross. Near the end it talks about 2012 and is well worth watching. The actual title of the video is "Part 1, Fall of the Aztec Empire, Cortes & The Plumed Serpent ... And the Earth Was No More" and it is credited to Dr. Rhawn Joseph who has a website at BrainMind.com which has a section dedicated to 2012 and the World Ends.
There is an excellent Calendar Converter at the Fourmilab website, which includes the Mayan Long Count system. The description of the long count makes no mention of a 13 baktun cycle, the next cycle being the pictun which is equal to 20 baktun. So there seems to be some doubt as to the significance of winter solstice 2012. What is clear that it is the end of the current baktun which began on September 18th 1618, the year in which Johannes Kepler discovered his third law of planetary motion.
IEEE Spectrum has a a special report on The Singularity with lots of interesting articles. They are not saying that it will occur in 2012, but if such an event does occur then it could certainly be within the next fifty years, and would be similar in some ways to the "Glittering Object at The End of Time" envisioned by Terence McKenna.
On 2007-05-23 Charles Manson was denied parole for the eleventh time. He will not be eligible again for parole until ... 2012.
Some people are saying that the recently discovered planet Eris is actually the mythical planet Nibiru, home of an an advanced race of alien beings known as the Nephalim or Anunnaki. I saw this in a recent blog post titled Eris is going to pwn the Solar System, from which:
Nibiru should, allegedly, be swinging back through on another pass of this part of the solar system around ... oh, 11.11 UT, December 21st, 2012. I never saw that one coming. Anyhow, when it does swing around, we should expect all sorts of crazy seismic activity and, if we're lucky, a pole shift.
On the subject of the "technological singularity" I have just read a classic 2001 essay by Ray Kurzweil calls The Law of Accelerating Returns.
Some people are raising funds to complete work on a film called Time of the Sixth Sun which is about the "shift in global awareness and transformation of consciousness as we approach 2012".
I have rewritten some of my original material and added something about a time traveller called John Titor.
I stayed up all night writing the intro page for this section. There is more that I want to add, but I have spent long enough on it for now. I will look at it again with a fresh perspective in the new year and make any changes I feel are necessary.
www.zenatode.org.uk Ian Gregory 2010