The various Mayan calendars merely had different cycles -- the longest resembling our own millennium ending and a new one starting. Nothing momentous accompanied such time-keeping -- the cycles were like the Sun rising and setting.

But now the fun begins, as people up with exquisitely moronic astrobabble in an attempt to find something celestial that might happen as the Mayan long count clicks over like a car's odometer. And bingo: Earth's orbit makes the Sun pass in front of the galactic plane, the Milky Way, twice a year, every June and December.

Some web sites claim the Sun passes right in front of the galaxy's center, but that never happens -- our orbit isn't tilted that way. In any case, the scare literature claims stars lying beyond the Sun will channel some sort of unspecified "energy" our way. No matter that nothing ever happened before when the Sun crossed the galactic plane. Nor does anyone explain why the distant background should matter to begin with. Do we care if a friend stands in front of a parked car instead of a tree?