Some People Really Know How To Live

"Elizabeth Clare Prophet, the spiritual leader of the Church Universal and Triumphant, which gained notoriety in the late 1980s for its followers' elaborate preparations for nuclear Armageddon, has died. She was 70.

Prophet suffered from advanced Alzheimer's disease or dementia for years, and was at her apartment when she died Thursday night, said legal guardian Murray Steinman. Steinman said he was not aware of any other complicating health issues.

'She just kind of wound down,' Steinman said.

Prophet led the Park County church that once boasted 50,000 members. In the late 1980s, church members amassed assault rifles and armored vehicles in preparation for a nuclear missile strike that Prophet predicted was on the way. The plan brought national notoriety and a federal investigation.

The church's beliefs combined icons from the world's major religions, mixing western philosophy and mysticism. Despite her disease, videos and writings of Prophet continued to dominate church teaching, transformed into a New Age publishing enterprise and spiritual university.

The church was still prepared for Armageddon in recent years, and kept a bomb shelter stocked for 750 people deep in a forest near Yellowstone National Park. Gone are the weapons amassed in the late 1980s that got church leaders into trouble with federal authorities.

The church declined in the 1990s, after a doomsday prediction never materialized and Prophet's charismatic presence faded, but lived on with a smaller group of adherents and workers."

-- The Associated Press

We're All Going To Die (Let's Start With YOU!!!)

"A troubled Bronx teen allegedly in a zombie-like trance stabbed his two younger brothers and sister yesterday – and was prevented from murdering them by a Good Samaritan, authorities said.

Cops say 17-year-old Nelson Santos lost it at about 3:30 p.m. and attacked his two brothers, ages 13 and 6, and his 9-year-old sister, with a knife in their second-floor apartment in Morrisania.

Police did not give a motive for the stabbing or what type of weapon was used, but the Daily News reports Santos told cops he was 'zombie-like' and used a butcher knife.

A police source told the paper the boy said he was seeing demons and neighbors said he practiced black magic.

Drenched in his own blood, 13-year-old Miguel Santos, who was stabbed nearly half a dozen times, dashed out of his living room and downstairs to call for help. Neighbor John Flores, 19, told the News Nelson Santos was screaming something about the Armageddon and chasing his younger brother with 'a big kitchen knife about as long as my forearm.'"

-- Jennifer Millman, who is probably as pleased as I am that Armageddon has made a comeback - It's the end of the world, people! - though, now, that probably means there's no need for me to read NBC New York.

The Future's Hard To Predict (Usually, Anyway)

Susan Milbrath, curator of Latin American art and archeology at the Florida Museum of Natural History, calls all the doomsday predictions "utter nonsense." She says the Mayan calendar doesn't simply end, it rolls over like a car's odometer.

"We don't have any evidence that the Mayans thought the rollover of a new calendar was associated with the creation of a new world," she says.

Milbrath says scholars have also found inscriptions on monuments in Palenque, Mexico, that allude to dates well beyond 2012. Why would they go to the trouble of marking dates if every human would be turned to ash by then?

She attributes the Armageddon hysteria simply to the fact that the long count is rolling over in our lifetimes. The Apocalypse is probably a lot more interesting if you're around to see it. Plus, this would hardly be the first time for end-of-the-world panic. Astronomers, soothsayers and religious figures have been predicting doomsday for thousands of years. Many in the Christian world thought Christ would return around 1000. In London in 1524, thousands abandoned their home, fearing a coming flood predicted by astrologers. In 1999 in America - well, you were probably there, so you know what happened. Or didn't.

The bottom line is, the world isn't going to end because the Mayan said it will. It's going to end because Al Gore said it will.

-- Reed Tucker, with a little bit of that rarest of things these days: common sense, in The New York Post.