To all you people out there that occasionally drop by to see what I’m up to, well I’d like to wish you a Happy Christmas / Holiday season. Goodness only knows how much I really need the break this year. It’s been a rollercoaster-kind-of-year with never a dull moment, and for once dull really looks attractive.
I am the first to advocate the belief that the only constant in life is change, but at times the rate of change can really wear you down to the bones. Yet enough gloom, be it far from me to add to all the hullabaloo that’s making the internet and social circuits in relation to the Mayan calendar. Oh yes baby, the world’s supposedly going to come to an end (again) on the 21st of December 2012!
At times I try to put myself in the shoes of that Mayan genius who came about with a neat way of compartmentalizing time into manageable cycles. Cycles that came to an end and were perennially renewed at the dawn of the next one. I figured that just as programmers way back opted to represent the year with just two ciphers, causing all the mayhem that was the Y2K bug, in much the same way this Mayan inventor opted to use cycles of a precise pre-ordained length. A length so huge that it seeing it end would be a once in several generations experience.
We humans tend to thrive on identifying patterns in whatever we do in life. Patterns offer us the false reassurance that we can somehow predict future outcomes. We do this in the most disparate situations. To be fair pattern matching can save you a lot of time, and in most cases they do turn out to be valid predictors of future happenings. Yet patterns never quite explain or predict the unexpected, the moment when happenings happen out of synch, foiling even the most reassuring of predictions.
For anyone who dabbles with a bit of gambling and probability, this concept is not new. We are fully aware that to assume that a pattern will persist over any given span of time, is itself a dangerous path. Any bet should ideally be hedged such that if losses are incurred they are small but that if winnings come along they are sufficiently profitable to justify the original gamble. Professional gamblers, those that do not become unnecessarily cocky about their abilities at the table, know that the best course of action in the long term is to always make decisions with positive expectation and to throw away those situations with negative expectation. Doing this does not guarantee winnings, but it does guarantee pulling the breaks on any losses that periodically will be incurred.
Back to the Mayans, well they were the quintessential gamblers, they had to gamble with nature, praying that their actions will lead to good crops and full stomachs. They had to gamble with sickness, hoping that certain actions and remedial activities would keep the community healthy. They gambled with territorial wars, hoping that their next battle would not impact negatively upon their burgeoning empire. Their calendar was their way of seeking out patterns to help them face the unknown in much the same way that probability and statistics help the player seek patterns that will turn his choices and decisions into sure winners.
That’s just about all I had in mind to share for now. Hope you will have a splendid time, enjoy the holidays, find time for friends you have not spoken to in a while and don’t stuff your faces too much or you will regret it in January! 
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