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COMMENTARY
December 31, 2011
Looking ahead
Among my predictions for 2012: There will be a presidential election in the United States. There will also be congressional, gubernatorial, and state elections, on a huge scale, with many surprising results. Mark my words: I am predicting this for November.Contrary to the prediction of the late Robert A. Heinlein, I foresee that Nehemiah Scudder will not be elected president on this occasion; nor will a theocracy be established in the U.S. after this does not occur. I predict there will be no general election in Canada. But the NDP will get a new leader, and there will be a provincial election in Alberta. I predict Her Majesty, Elizabeth II, Queen of Canada, will celebrate her Diamond Jubilee; that monarchists will be generally pleased with this event, but that the republican killjoys will sneer. There will be a Summer Olympics held, I'm guessing in London, U.K. There will be various security concerns related to this event. I predict social convulsions in the Middle East. I predict Islamists will win more elections. And in Europe, I predict financial convulsions associated with the discovery of new fiscal weaknesses in the eurozone. Let's go out on a limb here. I predict an astounding coincidence when a solar transit of Venus corresponds to the 68th anniversary of D-Day. And, there will be a total solar eclipse in November, visible in parts of Australia. Make of these portentous events what you will. I think there will be sex scandals associated with various Hollywood movie stars and prominent performers in the popular music industry. A number of famous people will also die, some quite unexpectedly at early ages. Yet, after all this, the date of Dec. 21, 2012, corresponding to the end of the 5,125-year cycle of the Mayan Long Count Calendar, will pass without the world ending, or any other catastrophe on that scale. Indeed, scientists will tell us that the mysterious planet "Nibiru" does not, in fact, exist. On the other hand, I predict that NASA's Kepler space telescope will discover other new planets, orbiting stars in other parts of our galaxy. I also predict that some of these will be smaller than others, leading to speculation on whether they are habitable. There you go. Stick this column on your refrigerator, and check it again in 12 months' time. I am feeling bold and confident of my prognostic abilities. And one more prediction, for the road. I predict that the latest proposal for universal calendar reform, promoted by professor Richard Conn Henry at Johns Hopkins University, will be ignored. Verily, I predict that by midnight tonight, not one sovereign nation will have adopted the new "Common-Civil-Calendar-and-Time," despite its many advertised virtues; and that by Jan. 1, 2017 - the proposed final date for worldwide acceptance - it will have achieved about as much as the Kyoto Protocol. It happens I am a connoisseur of calendar reforms, to all of which I am opposed. Since the time of Pope Gregory XIII, whose sensible, and arguably necessary reforms were proclaimed in 1582, there have been many wacky suggestions, most of them aimed at removing the Catholic association. The primary flaw in most of these proposals, is the creation of intercalary days or months, either to regularize the mensual intervals, or bring the lunar cycle into accord with the solar one. The traditional Jewish and Muslim calendars play the latter tack, preserving the succession of seven-day weeks; but rationalist and revolutionary reformers have always preferred to disturb the succession of weeks, thereby afflicting all religious observers. Henry's system would create full intercalary weeks, every fifth, sixth, or seventh year. There would be 13 weeks to each season (which in nature vary somewhat in length, owing to the Earth's oval circuit of the Sun), with months of consistently 30, then 30, then 31 days. The resulting calendar would thus be "perpetual" - the same date falling on the same weekday, year after year. He and his admirers admit the Gregorian calendar would have to be kept for reference, by "agronomists" and the like, to remember things like planting dates, since their perfectly rational calendar would shift off the seasonal position by as much as five days at a time. Their chief selling point remains, however, "It does not tamper with the week." Since the beginning of time, all reform proposals (regardless of subject) have been sold like this: by stressing all the wonderful things the proposed reform will not tamper with. Only after the reform is instituted, do we find out how much bridge goes under the actual water. So let me take this occasion to wish my readers a happy, prosperous, and uneventful New Year. Let us unite in common fellowship to oppose, to suppress, and whenever possible, to punish, every proposed rationalization and reform through another year; and let us pray that in the coming months, not much will happen. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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