- 70 AD: the fall and desecration of Jerusalem ended the world, according to the Preterists. Whoops.
- 500: Hippolytus of Rime worked out the Biblical ’6,000 year rule’ to apply to this year. For more fun with that same figure, keep reading.
- 989: Halley’s Comet always brings impending doom. Just ask Mark Twain.
- 1000: very little of an apocalyptic nature happened this year, aside from a bunch of Christians getting worked up about the rather flexible millennium date.
- 1874: the Jehovah’s Witnesses begin a long and lucrative career of predicting Armageddon, starting with this year. BTW: it didn’t happen.
- 1878: It didn’t happen this year, either.
- 1881: no, really…the JW’s were on a roll.
- 1910: again? Well, if you Witnesses say so.
- 1914: people are probably starting to wonder about Jehovah’s Witnesses.
- 1918: we like the four-year cycle, but could the Jehovah’s Witnesses maybe split it up into a summer apocalypse and a winter apocalypse?
- 1925: about this time, people may be forgiven for hoping that the world ends just to shut the Jehovah’s Witnesses up about it.
- 1975: they gave us a 50-year break (which included WWII, which was chock full of apocalyptic signs) but those scrappy Jehovah’s Witnesses aren’t done yet.
- 1982: “The Christ is Now Here”, according to the Tara Center, who later state that He’s not ready to reveal himself after all.
- 1984: Orwell buffs and Jehovah’s Witnesses alike considered this to be a significant year. Unless Van Halen is the antichrist (not unproven), they were probably all wrong.
- 1994: Nostradamus tries posthumously to beat the Jehovah’s Witnesses record for most failed predictions. Luckily, he’s much more vague and obscure, so he’s never really wrong…
- 1997: No, really, the Christ is Now Here, according to Share International (a.k.a. the Tara Center). Interestingly enough, The Christ (a.k.a. Maitreya) tops the list of several groups who believe him to be the Antichrist instead. Either way is okay with us — we still get apocalypse!
- 1998: This is the year, says Nostradamus and others (and maybe not even him). For example, Eli Eshoh proved that the Rapture was going to happen, and by golly, it did (didn’t you notice?). We’re still not sure who were raptured, but those of us Left Behind should watch out for 2028. Two ends of the world for the price of one? Good deal!
- 2000: the change of the millennium makes a great date for the End Times. However, even the Y2K Bug turned out to be little more than a minor inconvenience.
- 2003: Ah, those wacky Zetas. They seemed so sure, and now Nancy and the rest of the earthworm-eaters simply claim that the Pole Shift of May 15th, 2003 was some sort of smokescreen or conspiracy, and the real day is still coming. But they won’t say when.
- 2008 2009 2010 2011: The Lord’s Witnesses (absolutely NOT Jehovah’s Witnesses, despite strikingly obvious similarities) are pretty sure that it’s all over one of these years. Well, as long as there’s still a World War I veteran alive, we’ve got nothing to worry about…so at least a year or two. Additionally, Harold Camping of Family Radio is pretty sure it’s all over in May. Or maybe October. Either way, he’s 100% sure.
- 2012: a very popular choice lately (and will probably remain so, up until the end of December). The basis for this date is Mayan calendars, Nostradamus, and sunspot predictions — and possibly a savvy marketing campaign by the Cults and Survival Gear coalition.
- 2014: Hey, this one comes from a Pope, so it must be true. In 1514 Leo IX gave us 500 years. You’d think that would be long enough to get our act together, but noooooooo…
- 2017: and then there’s the “Sword of God Brotherhood” (great name) who will be the only ones surviving this year, tasked with repopulating the planet. Hopefully there’s a Sisterhood as well. Or not…
- 2028: Eli Eshoe again. Anybody left after the great Rapture of 2008 (remember that?) and the ensuing tribulation (i.e., now) has until 2028 to prove themselves. Get to work.
- 2240: the Talmud says that the world as we know it will only last 6,000 years, starting with the creation of Adam (which apparently happened about 5770 years ago…sorry, Lucy). The Talmud is pretty discouraging about how much fun our final two centuries are going to be, but the world after Armageddon should be very nice.
- 2280: the Qur’an gives us 40 more years than the Talmud, according to Dr. Rashad Khalifa and a computer-assisted numerical analysis of the holy text.
- 3797: this one comes from Nostradamus, but so have quite a few other dates (past and future). Just in case this was the year that he really meant, clear your schedule.
Tag Archives: smoke
Scientists Find 2,700-Year-Old Pot
Scientists have discovered two pounds of a dried plant that turned out to be the oldest marijuana in the world. Inside one of the Yanghai Tombs excavated in the Gobi Desert, a team of researchers found the cannabis packed into a wooden bowl resting inside a 2,700-year-old grave. It was placed near the head of a blue-eyed, 45-year-old shaman among other objects like bridles and a harp to be used in afterlife.
At first, the researchers thought the dried weed was coriander. Then they spent 10 months getting the cannabis from the tomb in China to a secret lab in England. Finally, the team put the stash through “microscopic botanical analysis” including carbon dating and genetic analysis, and discovered the stash was really pot.
The fact that the weed had a chemical known for psychoactive properties called tetrahydrocannabinolic acid synthase, or THC, led scientists to believe the man and his community probably used it for medicinal and recreational purposes. According to professor Ethan Russo of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Botany, someone had picked out all the parts of the plant that are less psychoactive before placing it in the grave, therefore the dead man probably didn’t grow his hemp merely to make clothes.
If marijuana aged like wine, pot users might now be in heaven. But the weed had decomposed over the years, so no one would feel any effects if they smoked the artifact today.
Mandelbox Zoom
Waking life – Ants
Super Smoker
Arnold Smokenegger
(AP) Arnold Schwarzenegger encouraged the director of “Pumping Iron,” the documentary that launched him in Hollywood 25 years ago, to re-release it unedited – including a marijuana-smoking scene.
“I would refuse to wipe out that record or change it or alter it because of image’s sake,” Schwarzenegger said this week. “That would not be true to the filmmaker.”
George Butler’s critically acclaimed 1977 documentary follows Schwarzenegger as he prepares to defend his Mr. Olympia title against fellow bodybuilders including Lou Ferrigno.
A digitally enhanced version of “Pumping Iron,” repackaged with previously unseen footage and interviews with actors and athletes influenced by Schwarzenegger, debuts Friday on the Cinemax channel.
Schwarzenegger retired from bodybuilding after winning the competition and began to build a movie career, including the early “Conan the Barbarian” and the breakthrough “The Terminator.” He shot a third “Terminator” this year.
He’s also been active in politics, most recently helping to win passage of an after-school-programs ballot measure in California, and has been widely reported as considering running for governor of California in 2006.
“Pumping Iron” follows the then-massively muscled Schwarzenegger working out or trying to psych out his opponents. He comes across as a merry prankster, telling a reporter in one scene that he advised an aspiring bodybuilder to scream, loudly, during poses.
Schwarzenegger may have been putting that reporter on. His claim in the film that he missed his father’s funeral because it would have affected a competition was untrue, he says.
It was part of the “docudrama” approach needed to sell a movie about the little-appreciated sport of bodybuilding in 1977, he said in an interview this week.
Each bodybuilder had a part to play in the film and he was the calculating and cocky winner, Schwarzenegger said. “The way to get headlines, to promote the sport, was to make outrageous statements.”
His determination, however, was real and apparently boundless. As a child in Austria, he recalls in the film, he dreamed of coming to the United States “and being the greatest.”
“I had a vision when I was a kid and I went after that vision, after that goal, after that dream, and I would not let go until it was accomplished,” Schwarzenegger said in the interview.
He’s equally dedicated now, he said, toward movies and toward projects such as the Special Olympics and his after-school measure.
Schwarzenegger won’t say if he has greater political aspirations, but he is unconcerned that any part of his past – such as the drag he takes off a marijuana cigarette in “Pumping Iron” – will hurt him.
“I did smoke a joint and I did inhale,” he said, taking a jab at President Clinton’s famous statement. “The bottom line is that’s what it was in the ’70s, that’s what I did. I have never touched it since.”
“I lived a certain life, I want everyone to know that’s the life I lived. As you grow up and as you become more mature, those things change,” he said.
“The only one that’s perfect is God.”
Still fit at 55, Schwarzenegger is proud of the attention he brought to professional bodybuilding and to how Americans perceive weight-training.
Watching “Pumping Iron” again, he said, “I thought about how far the idea of weight resistance training has gone, because in those days no one did it, no athlete, no older person. The medical industry didn’t recommend it. Today, everybody’s training.”
Domesticfix 