Remember the Y2K scare? It came and went without much of a whimper because of adequate planning and analysis of the situation. Impressive movie special effects aside, Dec. 21, 2012, won’t be the end of the world as we know. It will, however, be another winter solstice.

Much like Y2K, 2012 has been analyzed and the science of the end of the Earth thoroughly studied. Contrary to some of the common beliefs out there, the science behind the end of the world quickly unravels when pinned down to the 2012 timeline. Below, NASA Scientists answer several questions that we’re frequently asked regarding 2012.

via NASA.

Some genius child in Colorado stole his parents hot air balloon and is now stranded in the air with no possible way to get down short of hurling toward solid ground at mach 3 .  Here’s the deets.

“Officials are trying to rescue a 6-year-old boy who climbed into a balloon-like experimental aircraft built by his parents and floated into the sky over eastern Colorado…

The helium balloon was tethered to the boy’s family home in Fort Collins, the Larimer County Sheriff’s Department said. The boy got into the craft Thursday morning and undid the rope anchoring it. The department said the dome-shaped balloon is 20 feet long and 5 feet high.”

The only things I could steal from my parents were their car, maybe some fancy sex dolls, and a few different types of hallucinogens, but how cool would it be if you had parents that built shit like helium balloons that you could lure hot chicks into with promises of a romantic tryst at an altitude of approximately 10,000 feet. Hey baby ever have an orgasm while plummeting towards a mountain at breakneck speed? The air is a little thin up here baby so it’s probly better you don’t choke me with my belt while you stomp on my man business with your stilletos…A boy can dream.

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We all know the death of privacy is imminent. We are so plugged into everyone else and everyone is so plugged into us, that even minor life happenings are oft posted and recorded for posterity. However, it is often taken for granted that are you leaving an electronic trail everytime you update a status or add a friend.

A couple of students at MIT picked up on this trail and turned it into a “Gaydar” of sorts:

Using data from the social network Facebook, they made a striking discovery: just by looking at a person’s online friends, they could predict whether the person was gay. They did this with a software program that looked at the gender and sexuality of a person’s friends and, using statistical analysis, made a prediction. The two students had no way of checking all of their predictions, but based on their own knowledge outside the Facebook world, their computer program appeared quite accurate for men, they said.

While this may, in the interim, serve as locker room fodder and crude humor, the applications are pretty much endless. Ferreting out political affiliations, sexual promiscuity, drinking habits and drug use… Even if you’ve never inhaled and certainly never posted about it, a lot can be inferred by the (online) company you keep.

via [Discoblog]