I didn't believe Nostradamus' predictions; many of them are "adjusted" by folks who attempt to pair events with hazy "predictions" to prove how right he was and that we should all change our ways from whatever they are before it's too late. I suppose somebody said that to the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Romans as well...but they didn't listen apparently, and slipped into relative anonymity save the odd historian/philosopher.

Nonetheless, I shoveled the driveway today in haughty defiance to the Mayans. While I respect what had to be an amazing culture prior to the Spanish incursion and/or mysterious departure not unlike that of the Anasazi in the American Southwest, the world just isn't ready to end. Life as we know it has its amazingly inept moments: climate change, religious-based violence and politicians, but no matter how much some may wish it to be so, I don't believe it. Others, however, do.

A Reuters global poll announced by the BBC today indicated that 10% of the world actually believes today to be their last day of life as they know it. How crazy is that? So crazy that the Minister of Emergency Situations in Russia actually took to the airwaves to declare that there was absolutely no chance that the world was going to end on the 21st. (Of course, by now it IS the 21st in Russia, so if it had disappeared, I'd have heard about it).

In France, a group of people have decided that UFOs are coming to pick them up so they've all gathered on a hill near Bugarach.

Of course, we have the "preppers" in this country who have stocked food, water and enough firepower to make "Red Dawn" look like a meeting of the local Cub Scout pack. They, at least, make sense: if the world doesn't end, they are at least prepared for ANY threat; of course, threats don't come often in the hills of the high plains, but one can never be too secure or have too many 100-shell magazines for the AR-15.

Tomorrow IS, however, the Winter Solstice so that may be why the date is auspicious...as many people do.

All I know is that I shoveled the driveway today, confident that it (and I) will still be here tomorrow morning...when I'll get the pleasure of doing it again.