2012, Monument Six, Bolon Yokte & using the End of the World to sell a movie
In 2012 Isn’t The End Of The World, Mayans Insist, the AP’s Mark Stevenson took a look at mounting 2012 hysteria:
It may sound all too much like other doomsday scenarios of recent decades — the 1987 Harmonic Convergence, the Jupiter Effect or “Planet X.” But this one has some grains of archaeological basis.
One of them is Monument Six.
Found at an obscure ruin in southern Mexico during highway construction in the 1960s, the stone tablet almost didn’t survive; the site was largely paved over and parts of the tablet were looted.
It’s unique in that the remaining parts contain the equivalent of the date 2012. The inscription describes something that is supposed to occur in 2012 involving Bolon Yokte, a mysterious Mayan god associated with both war and creation.
However — shades of Indiana Jones — erosion and a crack in the stone make the end of the passage almost illegible.
Archaeologist Guillermo Bernal of Mexico’s National Autonomous University interprets the last eroded glyphs as maybe saying, “He will descend from the sky.”
Spooky, perhaps, but Bernal notes there are other inscriptions at Mayan sites for dates far beyond 2012 — including one that roughly translates into the year 4772.
You can go a lot deeper into the hysteria – including that manufactured (this site for one) by the 2012 movie promoters – along with the actual archaeology at Monument Six on the Toltec I Ching Blog.
Be sure and check this out bigger in Mananetwork’s Mexico slideshow and see a lot more of his travel photography on his blog.
A long time ago … when special effects were really hard
Computer Graphics From a Long, Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far, Far Away from Topless Robot:
Oh man. /Film started my day with this 10-minute documentary from Larry Cuba about how he made the computer graphics for Star Wars, specifically, the Death Star assault video Dodonna plays for the Rebel pilots, and it is so, so awesome. Cuba is obviously so proud when he says he’s moving his Death Star model in real time, and he should be, since back in 1976 that probably needed 400 computers glued together and the blood sacrifice of a white calf. Anyways, it’s fun for Star Wars fans and a neat look back for computer nerds alike.
Imagine the movie industry doing what they do now without the plastic reality offered by oceans of computing power and unbelievable software.
Topless Robot is a kickin’ site that features geek chum like Teenage Mutant Reservoir Turtles and The 10 Best ’60s Batman TV Villains Who Should Make the Leap to Comic Books (10 villains, 10 videos including Vincent Price as the Egghead).
Home from the War
Welcome Home, War from Mother Jones talks about how the technologies pioneered in overseas military action seem to always find their way home. From centralized data, covert penetration, and disinformation developed during the first counter-insurgency campaign in the Philippines up to the present day, it’s a chilling look at what a democracy doesn’t want coming home from the war.
Pushing ever closer to the boundaries of what present-day technology can do, by early 2008, US forces were also collecting facial images accessible by portable data labs called Joint Expeditionary Forensic Facilities, linked by satellite to a biometric database in West Virginia. “A war fighter needs to know one of three things,” explained the inventor of this lab-in-a-box. “Do I let him go? Keep him? Or shoot him on the spot?”
A future is already imaginable in which a US sniper could take a bead on the eyeball of a suspected terrorist, pause for a nanosecond to transmit the target’s iris or retinal data via backpack-sized laboratory to a computer in West Virginia, and then, after instantaneous feedback, pull the trigger.
This kind of stuff creeps the crap right out of me, especially when I read that the Obama Administration is expanding (rather than rolling back) a lot of the national security measures developed during the Bush administration.
The photo is Warrior Spirit by country_boy_shane. Shane has some amazing photoshop & photography skillz – check his work out via Flickriver.
What is it with Gordon Lightfoot and internet video?
I was noticing the other day that two of my absolute favorite videos on the internet have one surprising thing in common: Gordon Lightfoot.
He of course wrote the classic ballad The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald which is the soundtrack for this amazing video by Joseph Fulton:
He also wrote a little known song, Black Day in July about the Detroit Riot of 1967, which captured in equally stunning fashion by KeylaBb:
Both of these videos are ridiculously well done – watch them please.
