Today is Winter Solstice Eve, and if fans of pseudoscience and lame, meandering New Age music are to be believed – we are all about to die horribly. It all has to do with some medieval Mayan calendar, which was misinterpreted in order to sell books and provide middle-aged hippies with a stable source of income for hallucinogenic drugs.
Moving along to something that has a bit more bearing on our lives – hardware, that beautiful synergy of real science, intelligence and billions of dollars spent on Cold War R&D. Today’s winners of two clever AMD 10-5700 APUs are Owen Hayes and Steven Kornmesser, congratulations guys.
Provided that the world doesn’t end in the meantime, we will hand out two more APUs next Tuesday. However, if the world really does end, I assure it will have nothing to do with an ancient calendar, polar shift, Nibiru or any of that nonsense.
And that’s the real beauty of science, not semiconductors, iPhones, or even the internet. Science allowed mankind to look beyond ignorant superstition and debunk silly anti-scientific theories, paving the way to the comfy lifestyle we take for granted today. It also allowed mankind to build thousands of thermonuclear warheads and ICBMs, so we don’t really have to wait for any specific date to end the world. All it takes is a few properly worded EAMs, a pair of keys and a couple of guys willing to push some buttons.