I certainly do not believe the world will end this year. I don't think any group of people were accurate or informative enough to predict something so complex and mysterious. I doubt we'll ever be able to determine such.

Having been around for 1999 changing over to 2000, and people predicating terrible events occurring as all the world's computers were going to crash, I have to believe that this too, is simply a silly rumour created by people who are easily swayed by public opinion and gossip. Obviously, nothing terrible happened on Jan. 1 2000 and I doubt anything will happen now.

I would agree that the people who believe in this rumor are simply ignorant.  The Mayan culture never said the world would end.  2012 is simply the end of the calendar.  We don't panic every December when a standard calendar ends.  We simply go out and buy a new calendar.  This is really the same thing.  It is an event with cultural significance but it is certainly far from a doomsday prophesy.

I wouldn't necessarily say "idiots" but rather people who are ignorant of Mayan history and culture, specifically the workings of their calendar, and people who are willing to believe what they see on the internet, in major motion pictures, and on a television network that continues, for reasons that elude me, to call itself the "History Channel." There are plenty of people who are inclined to be superstitious anyway, and the purveyors of our popular culture recognize that there is a bit of money to be made by stoking their fears.

I can't understand why people think that somehow the Maya had some insight into when the world will end (whatever that means) that goes beyond what we know using modern science.  In addition, recent discoveries have shown that the Maya didn't even believe that the world was going to end, just that the Long Count was going to turn over.