The Overmind Worries

The Internet today is like a vast multicultural overmind. Browsing the many blogs and web sites one can get a peek at the stream of consciousness, and I imagine that large search sites like Google are in an interesting position. They can view and interpret data that shows what the overmind is thinking, asking, wondering about. (Not to mention the fact that they also host thousands of blogs where individuals like myself vent their own internal thought strands.)

Lately the Overmind has been very worrisome. Sample the net and you will quickly find a huge dose of anxiety and outrage about the economy and the impending "collapse" of civilization. Sage advisers lecture and offer investment advice for riding out the coming storm. In its darker corners, the net is abuzz with conspiracy theory, distrust of government in all forms, hints of global masters secretly plotting history, and all with a backwash of imminent doom on an astronomical scale. Hollywood's blockbuster "2012" busted more than a few blocks. It touched a deep nerve of anxiety in the Overmind that seems to be nervously waiting for "earth changes."

There are maps on the net, reputed to be drawn by seers and prognosticators, that show vast changes to continents, like the massive flooding of the central US and disappearance  of huge segments of the west coast, and most of Europe. Ever since Gordon Michael Scallion began hawking his map of the future world, this talk of "earth changes" has been a worrisome strain of thought in the bitstream.

Of late, however, there has been more and more posting about the arrival of a Nemisis to our inner solar system. NASA says the visitor is a long period comet, now named "Elenin" after the last name of the man who discovered it, Leonid Elenin. But the Overmind quickly dismissed that with talk of coverup and conspiracy, helped along by the fact that Google is inconveniently missing an image in the section of the sky where this object is supposed to be at any given moment.  Any hint of censorship on the net quickly becomes fodder for conspiracy.  Elenin is now supposed to be a acronym for "Extinction Level Event Now Is Near." The doom-sayers insist it is no simple comet, but the mysterious 10th planet they call "Nibiru," which they claim is really a brown dwarf companion star to our sun, the fabled "Bearded Star" that appeared in ancient times and is making its modern day debut this year.

Like an uninvited guest at our dinner party, this "thing" has now crossed the orbit of Mars and is heading for a close approach to earth on October 17th of this year, where it will be .0232 astronomical units from our world. (About 21.5 million miles.) There have been papers published claiming that the alignment of this body with the earth and sun has been causing all the volcanic and tectonic activity we've been experiencing in recent years, with big earthquakes occurring every time such an alignment occurs. Others claim that the mass of the object is so great that it will do one of two things: force a magnetic pole shift or force a much more radical tilting of the earth itself--a physical pole shift. UPDATE: The claim is now being made that the object has already caused a 90 degree tilt of the planet Saturn, and ignited major storms in its turbulent atmosphere.  "Calculations" have appeared on the web indicating that the earth is also going to make a mighty planetary tilt as well. There are detailed timelines posted on the net, a plethora of Youtube videos and a gaggle of web sites all explaining what is supposedly about to happen, just weeks away now, as the massive gravitational pull of Nibiru is supposed to literally pull the earth over on its side as our planet "bows" to the interloper vying for control with our own sun. Good luck to anyone on the planet in surviving that!

Needless to say, this is "worrisome" to segments of the Overmind.  I have run across posts that claim they overhear wealthy folks speaking in hushed conversations at country clubs about being "ticket holders" to special underground survival facilities, an idea floated through the script of the movie 2012 as well, where the elite sought refuge in their own modern version of Noah's Arc.

Drat...I don't have a ticket, so I guess I'll just have to ride out "the Show" with the rest of the rank and file. I'm comforted by the thought that NASA says Elenin is rather wimpy as comets go, and that given its size and distance from earth, your own car has more gravitational influence over the earth than Elenin does! I'll post again on this in October, so we can finally put this to rest and move on to something else. There are going to be a lot of very disappointed doomers and earth changers out there when September and October pass quietly by and the earth remains happily in its orbit--no Nibiru, no Nemesis, no Planet X, no passage through the tail of a massive brown dwarf star. It will be interesting to see how all the presently existing web sites devoted to this cut and run for cover when nothing happens. Will they all just edit their timelines and post new dates a few years hence, saying that Elenin was just a harbinger, the first in a series of dark objects yet to come, passing by like a prophet with its early warning. That's the most likely outcome.

UPDATE: True to this prediction, on July 27 another lengthy article seized the on-line doomer community with the claim that Elenin was indeed simply a harbinger. The "calculations" indicate that Nibiru is traveling in the wake of the comet, some 8 Astronomical Units behind it. This would put it close to the earth not this October, but a full year later, in October of 2012. As the Church Lady might say, "How convenient!" So we now have another full year of "impending doom" just when their lease on predicted catastrophe was drawing very short and about to be disproved when Elenin passed us harmlessly by.

Drat, I guess this means that all the "proof" of Elenin's awesome power that was supposedly printed on a Swiss Franc is, well... BOGUS! (Not to mention the fact the the obvious comet depicted on that bank note is a short period object called "Halley's Comet," and not Elenin, which is approaching earth from an entirely different angle. But heck, who cares about details like that.)  And by the way, Saturn has NOT tilted on its side, nor is there any massive object 8 AUs behind Elenin.

So many of these sites are so dead sure this is the arrival of Nibiru that they'll have to do a real song and dance to cover for the embarrassment when nothing happens. What will they think of next, then, to fill that yawning space in the soul that longs for catastrophe on a grand scale?

Then again...If all these folks are correct, and there is a massive worldwide coverup of this impending event, then we are all basically living out the last  months or year of our lives. (Because if the earth undergoes a physical pole shift it will be an extinction level event. The massive surge this would create in the oceans alone would kill 80% of the earth's population that mostly lives on some coastline.)  So who cares about the debt ceiling? Who cares about the fate of the Euro and the PIIGS? Who cares about Gadaffi and Libya? Or for that matter who wins the nomination in an election that will never be held next year?

Me? I'm betting on my October post about all this going up without incident. This year, and next year as well.

Something Wicked This Way Comes...

Is it just me with this strange feeling of presentiment these days or is there a lot of doom buzz out there? Do you feel it? The world was supposed to end with a massive earthquake two days ago according to an elderly man who reportedly spent his life fortune on ads to proclaim his vision of impending doom. When I first heard that, I dismissed it as the act of another senile old coot who had nothing better to do with a couple hundred thousand in his retirement account--until I learned that he collected a cool $17 million in donations from the publicity his seemingly foolish act garnered. The latest news of the event spins this way: "Believers Cope With An Intact World." The organization that grew up around this event now claims the actual date for total world destruction is October 21st, (not May), and they shout "God is God and he will do what he has to do." Apparently one thing he was unable to do was get his messenger and prophet the correct date. But then again "God works in mysterious ways." Anyone want a refund on your donations to this group? It seems they now have another five months to rake in the big bucks.

Stocks opened sharply lower this morning. If you read enough financial news you will inevitably run into gold bugs with their own message of impending doom. They say gold will hit $5000 and the dollar will crash...as if the dollar hasn't already crashed. It has lost 97% of its purchasing power since "The Fed" started printing them in 1913. Like our doom saying prophet, Paulson and Geithner both went to congress with their own litany of gloom, claiming disaster would befall us unless the debt ceiling was raised and the Fed was given permission to keep on printing. I guess predicting doom for big bucks has a lot of interesting angles. The government is already dipping into pension funds to keep the wheels turning. D-Day is supposed to happen in August some time, but I'm willing to bet the debt ceiling will be raised and the doomsayers in suits and ties at the Treasury and Fed will net billions, putting the crazy old coot I opened with to shame. 

But beyond the unrepentant financial malfeasance of the banks and the Fed, there is still this patina of impending disaster over all the news these days. After the swine flu, the BP gulf oil disaster, the tornadoes, the flooding Mississippi, the massive earthquake and tsunami in Japan with three nuclear plants in meltdown and radiation wafting up into the atmosphere and washing into the ocean, one has to make a real effort to keep a balmy positive attitude. In recent years, May is a month that almost always holds some mega-story that dominates the news until at least September. All we got this month was Osama, and that is already old news. We've shaken off all the stories above and moved right on to the travails of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria, but that story is already fading away. Our collective attention span seems shorter and shorter. Perhaps we are so doom weary that we shrug things off reflexively now.

The doomers remain in high gear, however. There is talk of the next "false flag" attack being planned, with Osama's death being the setup for that event. Then there is always Comet Elenin out there, making its slow, inexorable way into the inner solar system. Stories have circulated that the alignment of earth, Sun and Elenin is causing...you guessed it--massive earthquakes. The doomtards on the popular forum "Godlike Productions" are reportedly setting up a space telescope observatory to look for Elenin. And not to be upstaged by crazy old coots or even the Fed, they now lead their forum pages with a bar graph showing how much people have donated towards the project. As of this morning they have collected just $7,055. of their hoped for goal of a cool quarter million. But watch that spike if we get another big disaster any time soon.

Well, I'll be the first to admit my own articles in the past have been predicting a lot of doom and gloom as well, though I haven't made a nickle on it. I guess instead of making serious forecasts of what the economy was likely to do after the banksters  bankrupted themselves (and a good chunk of the American Middle Class) I should have just predicted the end of the world and left it at that.

So I finish this post and publish it, then scoot over to CNN to take in a little morning news before I read James Kunstler's Monday morning doom post... Lo and behold, we have a raging volcano in Iceland and Joplin Missouri was devastated by a big tornado this morning. The CNN video of the event was aptly led by a commercial from "eSurance" hawking auto insurance before we get treated to the stacks of damaged cars and trucks in Joplin...Is nothing sacred these days? Is all our misery just another occasion for advertising? No thanks eSurance. I'll stick with Geico.