[Aztlan] The 2012 Meme

[Hoopes, John W]

Jan Irvin has now made two podcast interivews about the Maya calendar and 2012 available online, one from me and one from John Major Jenkins:
 
Podcast #004 - The 2012 Meme.  An Interview with Prof. John Hoopes
http://gnosticmedia.podomatic.com/entry/2008-11-10T20_44_37-08_00
 
Podcast #008 - The 2012 Meme, Part 2.  An Interview with John Major Jenkins
http://gnosticmedia.podomatic.com/entry/2008-12-08T00_07_50-08_00
 
(In his interview, Jenkins makes mention of the discussions that have transpired here on AZTLAN.)
 
I hope these will provide additional stimulus for discussion, argumentation, investigation, and insight.  I anticipate that this issue will bring many new investigators into Mesoamerican and Pre-Columbian studies.  It will be the responsibility of all of us to guide them well, teach them how to think critically, and steer them away from pseudoscience once their sincere interest has been sparked.
 
The best scholarly background for discussion of 2012 is Mark Van Stone's excellent resource on the FAMSI website:
 
It's Not the End of the World: What the Ancient Maya Tell Us About 2012
http://www.famsi.org/research/vanstone/2012/index.html
 
John Hoopes
 
P.S.
 
For the record, my last name is mispronounced by the interviewer.  If you say, "Hoopes took the good looking cookbooks," you'll get the "oo" sound correct.  It's a counterintuitive but archaic pronunciation, which is partly why I prefer it.