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Well, it's the end of the world again. This time it's scheduled for December 21, 2012 at 5:57 PM, plus or minus 15 seconds. According to the believers (you know, the folks in the nightgowns with the "The end is near" signs) there will be a cosmic realignment, whatever that is. Doom and gloom, doom and gloom.

There are those who believe that the I Ching (book of changes) written by the Emperor Fu Hsi (pronounced phooey) in about 2900 BC also predicts the apocalypse in 2012. And that Nostra-dumb-arse, the 16th century Sears (and Roe-buck), also predicted that 2012 will be the end of the world. Of course, revelations reveals, along with the seven-headed, ten- horned beast that the last days will be in 2012. I wonder if they have peyote in the deserts of the Holy Land.

One of the arguments for the truth of these proficies is that various different cultures in different parts of the world come up with the same date for the end of the world. There are two reasons for this. The first is that most ancient proficies are written like Horror-scopes -- the quatrains or whatever are so vague that you can read into them whatever you want them to say. And in the second place the more explicit ones of them are written by cultures that strongly believed in astrology -- the stars know especially the ones who have won Oscars. On December 12, 2012, the sun in its apparent path in the sky will pass through the heavens and the center of the Milky Way at the winter solstice. What could be a more momentus occultation? Something amazing has to happen. Any careful astronomical observer can predict when this will be.

You would think after the Y2K debacale people would figure out that predictions of doom are generally overdone and, when the day arrives, undone. If you remember, Y2K had a basis in reality. In those days they used the two last digits of the date in computers to designate the year, i.e., 10 was 1910. To boot, most computer software considered 00 to be nothing -- not two digits but nothing. So all the computers were going to crash, taking the banks, all control systems and the Internet with them. Well, nothing much happened, although I myself had a Y2K pen which kept writing 1999 in my checkbook even though it was 2000.

And there is reason to believe that bad things will happen in or around 2012. There will be a sunspot maximum some time in about 2013. On 1 September 1859, at the peak of the sunspot cycle, a solar flare started fires in several telegraph offices (the only facilities connected to long wires). In addition, in 1989 a solar mass ejection knocked out the power grid in Quebec for several hours -- Sacre bleu! In addition, the high velocity proton flux from flares and mass ejections can damage or destroy any solid state device using semiconductors -- bye-bye satellite com-munications. So we are likely to have in 2012 a solar flare that takes out electrical and electronic devices connected to wires and satellite communications.

So long electric lights, cell phones, cable TV, GPS and Nintendo. We may even have to read books for entertainment again and by candlelight yet. We may have to find our way around with road maps. And worse, we may have to talk to each other face to face. This may go on for a few hours or a few days and it may even take a few years to get satellites back up and running. It's the end of the world!