Well, this is it, the last day of the universe according to the Mayan calendar. Supposedly this is when everything will get interesting; in the Mayan mythos, our existence is on a pendulum which swings every few thousand years, velocity indicating the strength of the scientific in one direction and magical in the other. Today is when it is at rest at the apex, where the velocity is zero.

The recent nanotechnology breakthroughs, I think, are the technological precursors, perhaps the harbringers, of the gradual but blindingly fast shift. There will be great battles of magic, in the form of little tiny robots precariously under our control, able to do what we program into them. They are our telepathy, remote eyes into others' lives and thoughts, they are our clairvoyance, with the ability to network and make predictions based on the low-level subatomic interactions between particles en masse. They are our changeling power, our means of exceeding our cumbersome macroscopic shortcomings.

Here's to those interesting times I was cursed to live in.

I am ready.

New translations of the Mayan myths suggest that the world is supposed to be reconstructed on this date, rather than destroyed. Don't ask me how this is going to be different (or better) than destruction. I just hope we're done with everything by then...