Both of which can't estimate the bio-chemistry processing of dreams or sub-conscience factors; thanks to Chimps & Dolphins, we at least know that instinct isn't intelligence though.

Brain is continually adaptative, in fact. And there no reason (oops, another key concept) to believe its highly variable components (flows of juicy molecules like blood stream & hormonal assets, etc) aren't MUCH more than a few neurones firing in tandem.

Strangely, exponential amount of gigs of artificial memory barely scratched the surface of any reasonable visual cortex. Call it the network of perception fueled by the will to live (some tie this with curiosity, somehow) rather than suck a supply of plugged voltage to think instead of "seeing".

Hence my point that the human brain is very very mysterious. Some people born without limbs have the sensation that they have have limbs. They even feel pain in the fictional appendages. These people have to unlearn the presence of these limbs. Weird.

Our brain is a marvelous thing.  It can study and analyze itself.

Now, as for the world ending......

I certainly hope it doesn't.  Humanity has so many things it could do. . .

I firmly believe that one day Humanity could reach into the stars and colonize other planets outside our solar system, even travel out of our galaxy, find ways to bend the laws of physics. . . . nothing, I believe, is outside the realm of what Humanity can achieve.

The possibilities are endless.  The only questions are if we will last that long, and if we will have the willpower to pursue those possibilities.

We MUST strive to do all that can be done, to discover all that can be discovered, to do what once seemed impossible.  We must remember that Humanity once thought the Earth was flat, that we could never fly in the sky, or in space, or that Deitys ruled our lives.  The search for knowledge must continue!

The people who came before us have advanced Humanity beyond all expectations!  We cannot let it all go to waste now, not when we have come so far! . . . .

. . . . And have so far to go. . . . .

well put GaryHam, but i have some interesting news, apparently the rapture will occur on may 21 2011

-http://www.ebiblefellowship.com/may21/index.html

-http://trend-signals.blogspot.com/2009/07/rapture-may-21-2011.html

-http://embeddedworks.com/21May2011/

-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o206kXo3Dwc

what do you guys think about this?

True, superb expression of hope by GaryHam. It's a rather optimistic view of Humanity's potential(s). A breath of fresh air against the alarmists, the fools & the freaks.

But, i doubt the Bible nor Nostradamus (or any prophecies by whomever for whatever reasons) can predict the future.

Cuz, we all read or translate from different perspectives or "agendas".

Besides, everyone knows all calendars don't keep track of time - they simply indicate *A* present reference to some past for everyone to interpret as they see fit or for a purpose.

So war mongers beware, we've got you under our rational thumbs.

Aren't the next Olympiads in London? Summer 2012, right?

Why would I want the torment to continue? 

Let fire rain down from on high! Smite the unholy.  And laugh into eternity....

2012 = Y2K, meh.

doomsday, its like some kind of fad that comes and goes every few years.

That is exactly the response of a person that I would hope would be sent to hell.

Simply because - is that a holy point of view?

Not that mine would be any holier, and I will probably burn in hell along with you. But, at least I don't view myself as holier than thou.

The people who look down on others because they think they're better are the ones to pitty; they have so far to fall, and you know it's going to hurt when they come down. Every person on the Earth sins - no one is 'holy' down here.

i agree, everbody interprets things differently, however its just some peoples influence over others is better the others

yeah http://www.london2012.com/

and the winter olympics are in 2010 in vancouver 

Looks like a bunch of what my mother calls "Woodwork People": any time she got a controversial case, they would come out of the woodowrk.

Spreading the human plague in to another planets eco system would not be an achievement.  (Written with my tongue half in my cheek.....and half not if I'm honest)

This post attracted replies awfully fast, took forever to read through them all!

Ok: I know this was a long time ago, but...

Pole Shift: A magnetic pole shift wouldn't destroy earth, but i would put us back in the stone age. The effect would be similar to the EMP burst of a nuclear weapon... Only much stronger. Changing magnetic fields produce electrical current, such a massive field reversal would fry EVERYTHING, even the things we considered "shielded" from such an event.

You can debate the severity of the aftermath of this, but the fact remains that populations would be isolated. No cars, no power boats. Cities would run out of food first, hysteria, etc....

Also, such a massive burst of electromagnetic activity would almost surely cause problems for nuclear powerplants, deactivating cooling systems and the like... VERY BAD!! Missle silos would lose control of the missles, they would not be able to fire, but the arming mechanisms would be fried... potentially very bad.

And now to the fun one: Zombie Apocalypse!

@whiskey: Those weapons would be great against lightly armored vehicles, but against a zombie you want a slow flying round. Something like a .45, a round with super-high velocity would simply punch through the zombie and allow it to munch on your face

My weapon of choice would be a minigun..... That shoots Aligators...... That explode..... A lot

Electro magnetic field has done a pretty good job at keeping track of solar winds, some of the UV rays and ozone layer equilibrium -- so far.

Pollution helping we might have plenty of CO² stocked into THE fragile Nitrogen balance to trigger a total zap of a spark worth anyone's global warming scares, that's a given.

Shift the Iron magma core fast enough, you'd even get tectonic inferno.

Yep, +/-... pick your hemisphere and watch clouds spit thunder storms for decades if not months.

Chaos, tame the Atom and yet, water is soooooo conductive that it makes tidal forces a ride in the park.

Gaia would get mad, frozen or burnt to the ground.

Actually, considering that the Earth's magneitc field is only .6 gauss at its strongest point, the EMP effect would be quite limited. You may loose a few of the less-protected power girds for a while, but cars and other devices wouldn't even be effected in a real EMP burst. Plus, without the electron shower, computers and cell phones would DEFINATELY not be effected.

Pays off also... Brown's Code & Angels -- sold out paragraphs and watched out by scoutdog's "Woodwork People". Ingenuity has a knack for emotional responses, collectively managed or sustained.

But fear not, GOD will help us -- it's written somewhere to calm down even the most uneducated or weak minded.

A week of total blackouts in some urban areas would simply create anarchy. It's called famine from lack of regular productivity ratios.

We are after all highly dependant on industrialized mechanisms. Machines pack up cereal boxes, etc. Delivery stops.

Remember Katrina in New Orleans? Multiply that "effect" by exponential limits, worldwide.

Katrina flooded an entire city. This would be sporadic blackouts. Last year, my area of Ohio got hit by a pretty nasty windstorm: I personally lost power for a week, and some people were out for three. Columbus didn't collapse into anarchy, and that was with tree limbs blocking roads and impeding transport. Only a few people died, and that was because of the storm, not the power.

Meteorological events are waaaaayyyy different than a pole shift; Eastern Canada suffered through weeks of an ice storm, IIRC... if you want detailed "analysis" of something close to home.

Arctic to Antartica is a magnetic shift; it simply fries communications until repaired. Pick a winter date... it has terrible consequences. In 2012 or later.

It is not the strength of the magnetic field that would be the problem, it's the size. Magnets and Elcetricity are very closely related (hence the term "electromagnetic"). An abrupt change in the magnetic field of an entire planet would result in catastrophic damge to electrical infrastructure, the amount of energy needed to shift the poles would be shed in the form of radiation. Ever wonder why every electronic device sold in the US has to have the "complies federal law section XXX this device shall not cause harmful interference..."? Those types of devices are very suceptible to even weak bursts of this kind. Put a magnet next to your cell phone and see what happens. Across the entire planet, communication is gone. No food. No idea what happened. What would you do?

About the tectonic implications of this, it is more dependent on the speed at which the pole shifts. If the core violently lurches, everyone would feel it... Tsunamis, earthquakes, eruptions... it would not be a good time.

Not to mention that the magnetic field is one of the main reasons why we havent been killed by radiation yet, what would happen with a random rapid pole shift and the radiation shield, nobody knows.

About a black hole swallowing earth, very little chance this could happen. There simply isn't anything with enough mass in our solar system that would create a black hole if it collapsed. But, for all we know, the sun is heading towards a black hole right now and taking us along with it.

The "end of the world" and the end of civilization are different things; which one, if either, is going to happen in 2012?   Who Knows.

Strangely, the sun also experiences such reversals every 7--15 years. Spots, flares... name it, all of which directly affects our planet "conditions".

Particules adrift have to go somewhere, yearly.

First off, the "Pole Shift" that was mentioned earlier is a shift in the Earth's rotational axis, not the magnetic field. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pole_shift However, this is just a theory that has yet to be proved. There is evidence that the rotational axis can move, but very, very slowly, about 1 degree every million years or so. For pole shifting to be a problem, it would have to happen very quickly, and there is no evidence of this happening.

As for a shift in magnetic poles, again, there is no evidence that it has ever caused mass extiction before. It is very likely that our ansestors survived one or more reversals, but they did not all die out. Granted, they did not have electronics, so no ones knows what would happen to them. Also, the magnetic North Pole is moving from Northern Canada towards Siberia at about 10 km per year, and there are no documented problems with electronics caused by this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_reversal

back on the topic of movies and zombie apocalypse...

go watch the movie Dead Girl for tips on how to prepare to cope when all your friends are zombies.