According to a few people who have very little experience translating Mayan heiroglyphs (or whatever you call those stone pictographs), this is the last year for the late, great planet Earth. Of course, the not-exactly-reverend Harold Camping said the same thing about last year. Twice.

Ever since people evolved consciousness, there have been folks talking about the end times. After all, if people are born and then die, so should planets.

And they do. It just takes a long, long time. If scientists are correct, then the Earth has been around for four or five billion years and probably has about as many left in the tank. If you're looking for any sort of reassurance, you can rest easy knowing that the Earth will be around for another fifty three million (or so) of your lifetimes. Now, an asteroid might well destroy life as we know it at any time. But if that were to happen, most folks would die very fast, as the temperature of the Earth would quickly rise to levels that even Republicans would acknowledge as "global warming." And then dust from the blast would keep the sun out for a few years, and things would get very cold.

Mostly, I'd be bummed that my iTunes wouldn't work. Then I'd figure out that I only had about a month's worth of beer in the basement, and the shit would really hit the fan. What's the point of a live-ending ice age without beer that doesn't need to be kept in the fridge?

But I really don't worry about all these doomsday scenarios. People are really screwing up the atmosphere and the environment in general, and we seem to be adapting. When I was a kid, stores sold suntan lotion. Now they sell sunscreen. Capitalism is good for something, I suppose.

Of course, the ozone layer is actually growing back a bit, so in a few decades folks might be moving back toward coconut oil and away from zinc oxide. That would be cool.

On the whole, though, we're still pooping in our own playpen. But I have hope that we'll be able to adapt and change just enough to keep the Earth from serving us an eviction notice.

Even if humanity is extinguished, the Earth will keep on spinning. It's awfully chauvinistic of us to think that the absence of humanity would mean the death of the Earth. Though, of course, there would be no beings around to call it Earth. Or Terra. Or whatever. Whatever follows us will come up with another name and another way to screw things up.

I love end times fiction (the Omen series kicks the Left Behind series butt, by the way), but I simply can't take the end of the world seriously. All of these scenarios are jokes. People will keep slogging forward until we all fall off a cliff. I don't know when that will be, but I'm sure I won't be around to enjoy it.

Which is a bummer, and yet reassuring.

Jon Worley is aware of the theory that the world will end one minute after the Royals hoist the World Series trophy once again. He's fine with that.