Apocalypse 2012 - What was it about?

Many friends  received emails highlighting a cataclysmic end to the world; esp. human life as we know it this year (2012). Some of them asked my opinion on the subject. I had then decided to answer them after the year was complete. My earlier entry (on the topic) was titled "End(s) of the World" written on May 20, 2011 as a rebuttal to the failing voice of Harold Camping.

The world did not end in 2012, or several dates marked prior to this where cults waited on hilltops or committed mass suicide. It is an unlikely event. Historically the most disastrous event we know is heavy volcanic activity forcing many people of the Minoan civilization to relocate.

Atlantis is a legend, perhaps even a fictional residue of a multitude of events as much as Troy of the Illiad. There is little proof to support existence of civilized life over 5,000 years ago. Although, there are those who believe that 10,500 BCE held some special civilization composed of hybrid homonids or only homo-sapiens (It would be only 2,500 years after the Neanderthals vanished en masse.) 

Despite several massive extinction events in the past, including the K-Pg or K-T event, life has never left planet earth nor has an entire genus been wiped clean. 

Before we confront the unfounded fears or subconscious "needs" of mass-destruction, let's take a look at the theories that spawned and turned out to be nothing ...

Global Climate Change: solving the jigsaw

With the attention on the "Global Warming" phenomenon, most people will be attributing this as the reason for "freak weather" and recently unpredictable climate changes (as the weather is not changing seasonally as it has been in the past century.)

Like most discussions on the topic, the illustration here jumps to explaining "cause." However, actual Global warming itself is an average increase of global temperature by 1 degree Farenheit. This would mean that the effect, despite specific points in the globe having upto 12 degrees Farenheit increase, the overall temperature average remains less altered. It is therefore too judgmental to pin massive climate changes on global warming itself.

Read on for a deeper explanation of how and why the massive weather changes occur ...

Laptops: an end of an era

Laptops started out as lightweight portable PCs, but have succumbed to stiff competition from the Smartphone, Tablet and Phone-Tablet (dubbed Phablet) alternatives.

The factors that have slowly taken the laptops close to their extinction are:

1. Weight (although portable, lugging them over long distances is not comfortable.)
2. Fragility (except for the rugged versions, most laptops cannot stand shocks)
3. Upgrades (very minimal)
4. Battery Backup (extremely low if compute power required is high defeating portability)
5. Lifetime (3 years at best, but the next generation replacement is seldom as far ahead as the smartphone class.)
6. Chargers (These are not standardized and vary heavily across brands and models.)
7. Serviceability (Time consuming and subject to spare part availability)
8. Thermal performance (Cooling has always been a challenge, with few laptops cutting that edge for those who can afford them.)
9. Display (Graphics acceleration for several reasons has always been minimal, rendering them less useful for high-end applications like rendering.)
10. Wireless Communication (Too few are provided with 3G making them less useful in remote environments)
11. Recycling (the mechanical design is usually less susceptible to recycling, as is the display, input interfaces and storage - with the core motherboard also getting outdated far too quickly. This coupled with the short lifetime is making them less recycle-friendly.)
12. Software (Operating Systems constantly requiring upgrades make the "Personal" computing part much costlier and less affordable across most available brands. This is also true of most application software used.)