2012 & The End of the World

Script

History has a long and rich tradition of apocalyptic predictions – all of which were wrong – yet some people still think that this time ’round in 2012 is the real deal.

Why 2012?

Because of ancient Mayan calendars. Obviously.

Mayan calendars not only recorded the days and years, but also longer cycles of about 5 Millennia.

So they could easily make calendars that went 1,000s of years into the future. But, of course, 1,000s of years in the future from 1,000s of years ago brings us to current times when the Mayan calendars stop in 2012.

Modern new-agey people decided that the wise Mayans stopped making calendars because they knew when the world would end.

And because new agers are happy – though scientifically illiterate – people their vision of 2012 was a great spiritual awakening or world reboot or other hippy-consciousness-expanding nonsense that the Mayans, who spent time puling strings of thorns through peoples’ tongue, probably didn’t have in mind.

To a normal person the thought that: calendar finishes therefore end of the world is an odd conclusion to draw.

After all, the amount of time in the Universe is infinite and the amount of stone is limited. So, at some point the Mayans had to stop carving calendars.

But never mind.

What should have stayed a fringe belief turned into mass hysteria with the 2012 disaster movie that swept the academy awards and the numerous emmy-nominated apocalypse documentaries on

::sigh::

The History Channel.

What happened to you guys?

Anyway. After this NASA became so inundated with questions that they had to take time away from their busy robot building, frontier pushing, knowledge expanding, civilization inspiring schedule, to write a webpage explaining that no, a human-sacrificing, stone-age society with neither wheels to pull carts nor glass to make telescopes, didn’t know more about science at the dawn of history than real scientists do today.

But the parade of crazy marched on anyway making wilder and wilder predictions for Earth including:

• Geomagnetic Reversal (a process that unfolds on a geologic timescale, not a single day)
• A collision with mysterious Planet X (That no astronomers have found)
• A local star going supernova (Despite there being no such candidates)
• An Alien Invasion (Which is ludicrous on the face of it… or is it?)
• And a galactic synchronization beam, whatever the hell that is.

A sane person, at this point, would wonder how the Mayans were able to predict astro-physical anomalies thousands of years in advance and millions of miles away yet didn’t foresee the Spanish coming across the Atlantic.

And that’s because the Mayans never predicted apocalypse. The only people to claim the Mayans knew about the end of the world were distinctly not Mayans.

Corrections & Notes

• The image at 0:14 and 0:59 are from kimberlyeternal and, at the time that I found it, was labeled as an Aztec / Mayan calendar. I didn’t have time to mention in in the videobut most Mesoamerica cultures used the same calendar.

Credits

Images

European Southern Observatory, Jan Harenburg, Urcomunicacion, kimberlyeternal, surfergirl30, kdinuraj, dafnecholet, psyberartist, Jenny Pansing, prayitno, deemac, springfieldhomer, amyelizabethplease, alicepopkorn, demibrooke, krikit, hape_gera

Music

‘Tango de Manzana’ by Kevin MacLeod

Presentation & Narration

C. G. P. Grey

A Brief History of Santa

Script

On the 24th of December every year children around the world put out milk and cookies in the hopes of luring a magic fat man into their home who will leave presents behind before sneaking into the house next door.

How did such an odd tradition begin?

You can pretty much blame Northern Europe, where the winter weather is cold and dark and depressing.

And the coldest and darkest and depressingest day is the Solstice on December 21st or 22nd when the sun only gives a few hours of weak light if any at all.

These sun-deprived people invented magical characters to visit them and lighten the mood by bringing gifts and celebrations.

These characters ranged from elves to Gods to goats, but there are two of particular interest to the modern story.

The first is St Nick, in The Netherlands. St Nick is thin and perhaps a bit stern, but still brings presents to children early in December. He dresses like a bishop in red and white with a staff and rides on a horse named Amerigo, for whom Dutch children are encouraged to leave out a carrot. St Nick is called Sinterklaas in Dutch.

The second character is Father Christmas from England. Father Christmas is a big, jolly pagan dressed in green with a holly wreath on his head.

Traditionally he is less concerned with children and gifts than he is with food and wine and celebration and is perhaps best known for being one of the three spirits of Christmas who terrorize Scrooge.

When Europeans settled the Colonies St Nick and Father Christmas and the other characters began to mix together.

This explains why the US version has so many names. Santa Claus is the Americanization of Sinterklaas, but he’s also called St Nick and Father Christmas and Kris Kringle which comes from Germany.

In the old world these were different characters, but in the new world over time they evolved into one which you can see happening in older stories.

For example, the poem, “The Night Before Christmas” came out in 1823 in New York which established that Santa lands on the roof and fills stocking with toys.

But this Santa is an elf, much like those from the Nordic Countries. He’s very small and drives a miniature sleigh with tiny reindeer – which makes a lot more sense for someone whose job description includes fitting down chimneys.

Also, the word, ‘Santa’ appears nowhere in the poem. The original title is ‘A visit from St Nick’.

As the 1800s continued a fat, human looking immortal Santa evolved into the standard among American authors. It was in the states that he gained both his elvish workforce and a wife.

By about 1900 Santa had developed his current iconic style. It should be noted that, contrary to popular belief, Coca-Cola didn’t change his colors to their corporate scheme but instead used the conveniently red-and-white Santa in 1931 to help sell more soda during their off season.

Though Coke didn’t create him their omni-present ads probably did brand this as the One True Santa in the minds of millions helping spread him round the world to many cultures with no traditions of winter gift-givers.

This American Santa in-turn influenced his relations in Northern Europe to become more like him, although not always to the pleasure of the locals.

In particular, the British Father Christmas has been completely assimilated into the Santa collective to the point where many Britons don’t realize they were ever separate.

In the Netherlands, however, St Nick is still successfully holding his own as a distinct character.

The one last detail about modern Santa that’s still up for debate, at least between countries, is where exactly he lives.

In the late 1800s his home was the magnetic north pole centered under the aurora borealis. While this would be the most diplomatic option for Santa Magnetic North has since moved off the Polar Ice Sheet and into the Ocean, a rather inconvenient place to set up a toy factory.

So Canada claims his workshop is somewhere in Nunavut and has given Santa a post code and – no joke – official Canadian citizenship.

The American response is that the North Pole doesn’t refer to the obviously inhospitable sheet of non-domestic ice but rather to the little town of North Pole, Alaska.

Denmark claims he lives in their former colony of Greenland. And Greenland, not surprisingly, agrees.

The Nordic countries quarrel about his exact location but Finland is the clear winner of this argument with his workshop in Rovaniemi on the Arctic Circle.

For the evidence inclined, you can actually go visit Santa there and see the elves, toys, reindeer and post office, which makes Finland’s claim pretty strong. Santa is even available during the off season.

But, no matter where he might be based, Santa still manages to get round the world in just one night to deliver all those presents… and eat all those cookies.

Credits

Images by: brenda-starr (1), joe57spike, jdhancock, think0, gregloby, donsullivan, pagedooley, faceme, seanbuchandpt, Temari 09, dottiemae, ladydragonflyherworld, zebrabelly, booleansplit, jblyberg, wonderlane, dabgp, dean_forbes, hanspama, blackpit, raaphorst, leuni, thewolf, borevagen, smaedli, sookie, Rising Damp, Spinool, opalsson, evoo73, bluecubus, miguelvirkkunen, honan, cpstorm, mulad, biscotte, ldcross

Music: Divertimento K131 by Kevin MacLeod

Special thanks to Visit Rovaniemi.

Death to Pennies

Script

The story of the penny starts in the first US Mint founded in 1792 which produced these one-cent pieces along with other coins including the Quarter, Dime, Half Dime and a mystery coin that we’ll get back to later.

These pennies of the new republic were born of 100% pure copper.

But, two forces conspired to ensure this wouldn’t remain the case for long. The value of copper went up and, because of inflation, the buying power of the penny went down.

This caused The Mint to reduce the amount of copper in pennies, first from 100% to 95%, and then to only 5% copper and 95% zinc.

Despite this debasement, in 2006 the value of the metal in older pennies rose over 1 cent and suddenly they were worth more dead than alive so people melted them to sell the raw copper for profit.

In a rational, efficient world, the story of the penny would have ended here with the Government realizing that they weren’t worth Minting and happy that its citizens were removing them from circulation.

But, instead the Government made melting U. S. coins illegal and continues to manufacture 4 million pennies each year.

Which is idiotic as it costs the US Mint about 1.8 cents to make a each 1 cent penny.

But, even if pennies were minted from something more representative of their true value – like plastic or lint – it wouldn’t fix the fundamental problem that pennies are bad for people and the economy.

Here’s why:

The purpose of physical, cash money is to make it easy to transact the everyday business of buying stuff.

A shopkeeper has stuff and you want that stuff. Rather than bartering like savages for it, you use cash as a medium of exchange.

To get the price just right the cash must be divisible into pieces so that you don’t overpay.

But it isn’t divided forever, because at some point the value it represents is too small to buy anything or bother with. Which brings us back to the penny.

In the olden days, pennies could actually buy stuff, no more. Now, if you want to spend pennies, you’re going to have to put in some effort.

For example, try to pay for 20 bucks worth of groceries with 2,000 pennies weighing 11 pounds and see how that works out.

So you have to get rid of them by using exact change.

But, because the United States doesn’t include sales tax in prices – unlike more civilized countries – and you can’t multiply by 8.875% in your head, you can’t get your change ready before you reach the register like a good Samaritan would.

The pennies you inevitably fiddle with after discovering the true cost of your goods add two seconds to each cash transaction on average which is less than the value of your time, and the time of everyone behind you, which is why most normal people don’t bother messing with change and the usual penny-counting culprits are those with nothing better to occupy their day.

If you want to spend pennies without being an inconsiderate jerk who wastes other peoples’ time perhaps you can find a machine that will accept them.

Good luck with that. Vending machines won’t take pennies, neither laundry machines or toll booths or parking meters or anything else – because pennies aren’t worth the time and effort to count, store and transport them.

In fact there is only one machine that takes pennies: Coinstar – a leach on the economy that eats 10% of your money while providing nothing in return except the ability to spend cash that was already yours.

The difficulty of spending pennies is why they end up in jars, dead to the economy after a short, useless life where they failed at their only job, to facilitate exchange and instead did the exact opposite by being a literal dead weight on every cash transaction.

They must be eliminated.

But, you might think, won’t prices rise and charities lose money without the penny?

No.

New Zealand got rid of their 1 cent coin, as did Oz. Finland and the Netherlands ditched the 1 euro cent coin as well. Though that might have been because of how absurdly small and frustrating 1 euro cent is.

These countries round to the nearest 5 cents for cash transactions and none of them saw prices rise or charitable donations drop.

And anyway, the United States has already gone through this process before without trouble.

Remember the mystery coin from the beginning? That was the half-cent. Seen one lately? Of course you haven’t. It was discontinued in 1857 for being worth too little.

But when the half-cent met its fate, it had more buying power than today’s dime so perhaps the list of modern coins to kill could even be larger.

There is one last, irrational problem with getting rid of the penny.

Everybody loves Lincoln – well almost everyone. After booting off Lady Liberty and the Chief, the US sure has Lincoln-ified the penny within an inch of its life.

But ditching the penny won’t erase him from history.

Lincoln, and his monument, are still on the 5 dollar bill which isn’t going away.

And, even if you think it’s unpatriotic or disrespectful to retire Presidential coinage, allow me to direct you to a little organization known as the United States Military.

Where, in overseas bases, they’ve already abolished the penny by automatically rounding to the nearest five cents.

Sooner or later even the most ardent Lincoln lovers will have to give up the penny: they cost more to make than they’re worth, they waste peoples’ time, they don’t work as money, and because of inflation they’re less valuable every year making all the other problems worse.

Sorry Abe, but it’s time to kill the penny.

Corrections

• The number of pennies produced should be 4 billion, not for million. I was off by three orders of magnitude. Whoops.

Credits

nukeit1, soldiersmediacenter, aaronescobar, think0, zieak, chadh-flickr, beigephotos, cleanwalmart, Karl Ragnar Gjertsen, SilverStar, totalaldo, Terry Presley, carbonnyc, perspective, compujeramey, billjacobus1, carbonnyc, like_the_grand_canyon, blakespot, Nina Matthews, flyheatherfly, maggiew, kamshots, bunnyfrogs, sooperkuh, tymcode, joeshlabotnik, usdagov