Skeeter Davis Alert™: The Mayans get everything right. On a ridiculously easy test.

Publication: Sun
Date: 24 Oct. 2011

My rules on printing predictions about the End of the World from the cover of the Sun are straightforward. If they give a date and events to expect by that date, I will print it.

On that date, I'll let folks know if any of the stuff came true.

Usually... not so much.

This time, the Sun says the Mayans are right because of these omens already coming true.

• Wildfires
• Terror threats
• Killer quakes
• Raging floods

These are supposed to happen before December 31, 2012. Even if we don't count the ones that have already happened this year, it's a stone cold lock that all these things will happen somewhere in the world in the next 62 weeks or so.

I guess when it comes to the End of the World, after you get it wrong so many times, you start grading on the curve.

The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow Alert™: The Mayans predict earthquake in the the Midwest in July.

If we are being all technical and stuff, the Sun got a prophecy right when they said the Mayans foretold of earthquakes in the Midwest in July 2011.

There are earthquakes in the Midwest of the United States almost every day. They are just really small.

The biggest this month in the Midwest was a 2.8 on the Richter scale, epicenter near Greenbrier, Arkansas. California had about a dozen quakes stronger than that this month, none of the them newsworthy. The biggest this month was a 7.0 off the coast of Japan, about 16,000 times stronger than a 2.8 and about 100 weaker than the gigantic quake that hit Japan earlier this year.

So I'm counting this as a technically correct prophecy, but a practically pointless one. People do not need to be forewarned about earthquakes a cat might sleep through.