Winter Wonderland & End of World Mystery

Had been trying for long time to capture details of sun flare. Got it today. If we closely observe at the top left corner, I could successfully capture the water droplets falling down the tree too.

After yesterday's heavy snowfall mercury changed the path and is going north now, as per latest prediction we are gonna have wonderful sunny weekend.
Thu-25 'F, Fri-35 'F, Sat-45 'F, Sun-50 'F, Mon-58 'F & Tue-60 'F.

This years' snowfall has been recorded the most in the history of city of Bentonville. People started this discussion earlier this week about extreem weather conditions (across the globe) & end of the world in 2012 (after watching that stupid movie "2012" last year).

* What's going to happen on December 21st/23rd 2012 ?
* Will the world end on 21st December 2012 because of the end of the Mayan calendar ?

I did some fact finding and here are the scientific details I could gather:

It appears that Mayan ideas about time keeping and calendars were very cyclical. This is actually easy to understand because it's quite like our calendar which has cycles of various sizes very familiar to us. For example there is a:
1 Jan every year
day 1 every month
Monday every week
1am every day

The Mayan cycles were a bit more complex, such that every day in a 52 year period had a unique name from a combination of various different cycles (similar to the idea that there is a Monday 1st January only every 7 years or so). This 52 year cycle has is called a "Calendar Round".
To keep track of dates on longer time scales the Mayans then had what's known as the "Long Count", which provides a unique numerical indicator for each day. Mayans did not count in base ten like we did, but usually instead in base 20 (although not always). The Mayan long count can be summarized as:

#days --- -- Mayan count
1 --- --- --1 kin
20 --- --- -20 kin --- --- --1 uinal
360 --- ---360 kin --- --- -18 uinal --- --- --- 1 tun
7200 --- --7200 kin --- --- 360 uinal --- --- - 20 tun --- 1 kactun
144000 ---144000 kin --- -8000 uinal --- ---- 400 tun -- 20 kactun -- 1 bactun
The name for a Mayan "epoch" apparently translates as 13 bactuns, which we can see is 13*144000 days or 5125.26 years (roughly).

There is actually some minor disagreement over when the current Mayan long cycle started, but it was probably either August 11th or 13th 3114 BC, which means it comes to an end on either Dec 21st or 23rd 2012.

Mayan calendar was designed to be cyclical, so the fact that the long count comes to an end in Dec 2012, while having some significance for the Maya as the end of a great cycle (much like we celebrated the millennium (incorrectly as it happens) on Dec 31st 1999), does not mean that the "world will come to an end". It's actually true that there are Mayan names for periods of time longer than 13 bactuns, so that their calendar doesn't even end then, and even if it did there is no evidence to suggest that they (or anyone for that matter) have any special knowledge about the end of the world.


PUN: Don't just plan to play all your savings in Vegas, You will still need to buy Cake & Coke on Jan 1st 2013.

Two more of today's catches...
1. Half Full / Half Empty
2. B & W & Gray

Few more new entries in the Album Here..