NEWSFLASH: The World Won't End in 2012

Let's clear up something first. The Mayans never predicted the cataclysmic end of all things in a particular year; their calendar just ran out of dates. My theory is that the guy assigned to write down all those dates simply got tired and quit. But try making that into a Hollywood movie.

Like Y2K before it, 2012 has become its own multimillion-dollar industry. Web sites, books, movies, you name it; just about everyone has gotten in on the action. So imagine the collective disappointment when it was discovered that the Mayan Long Count Calendar - or at least our understanding of it - is wrong. The world won't come to an end in 2012. In fact, the ending date on the calendar may be off by 50 to 100 years. (Someone forgot to carry the one, or something like that.)

I guess that means our grandchildren will probably be the ones having to worry about the end of the world. But since they would have already had to deal with the bankruptcy of Social Security and Medicare, the collapse of the U.S. dollar, a third world war, and several more butchered re-releases of the Star Wars movies, I can't think of a better-prepared generation.