Not wolf

   The sky is falling! Wait, that was last week.

   Don't look for me  tomorrow, I'll be hiding out in my nucular fallout shelter. Why? Well, it's 6/6/06 tomorrow, doncha know. The date of the beast, end of the world, or some such. I have actually read news reports of pregnant women who were worried about giving birth tomorrow asking for inductions or scheduled caesarian sections to avoid it.
   Of course, it's only 6/6/6 if you ignore the first three numerals of the year. If you are going to do that, then why didn't the world end a decade ago, on 6/6/(199)6, or the decade before that in 1986? Perhaps we can only ignore the first two numbers, because they are commonly dropped in short form notaion of the year. And then, the third number would have to be a zero. But the world was still here the morning of June 7, 1906, so that can't be it either.
   In fact, if you are going to refer to a date as having some connection to the "number of the beast," why not the real 6/6/6: June sixth, of the year six? Clearly, the world did not end on that day, either, although there is significant disagreement about when exactly that date occurred. The Gregorian calendar, which we currently use to measure the year, wasn't set until 1542. Prior to that, the passsage of days, weeks, months and years was marked by the Julian Calendar, according to which, tomorrow will be May 24th. And, according to the Julian calendar, what we would mark as 6/6/6, was actually June 8, year 6. "Missed it by that much." Of course, that calculation is based on the revision of the Julian calendar made in the year 8 (C.E., A.D., whatever you want to call it). It had actually been adjusted several times since its inception in 46 B.C.

edited to add: Oh, yeah, let's not forget that the Book of Revelations wasn't even written until almost 90 years after June 6, year 6. There's a paradox for you. If the world had actually ended on 6/6/6, it would have ended almost a century before the prophecy predicting the cataclysm was written. Try not to think about that too much, OK?

   There are many other calendars we could look at as well. According to the Hebrew calendar, tomorrow will be the twenty second day of Sivan (which is the ninth month), 3766. Well, there are a couple of sixes in there. In the Islamic calendar, tomorrow will be 9 Jumada al-awwal (fifth month), 1427. Isn't even a single six in there, not that any Muslims would be that concerned if there were.
   In the Persian calendar, it will be 16 Khordad (third month), 1385, and according to the Mayan long count calendar, tomorrow will be 12.19.13.6.10. Note that the Mayan calendar does allow for a periodic destruction (and recreation) of the world, but that isn't scheduled to happen for another 2500 years, or so. It won't be June sixth then either.

   My purpose here is to point out that June 6, 2006 is an arbitrary date in a numbering system created by man that has been fiddled and fudged with over and over again across the course of centuries. Believing there is any significance to a date on the calendar is like believing you can foretell the future from patterns in the left over leaves on the bottom of a used cup of tea.
   Maybe that was a bad example.

tags:Skepticism