Etc

Advisory: I am not a scientist, so it's entirely possible that I have this all wrong.

I occasionally bore people with a story about a relatively recent discussion with an old friend about something that happened to us when we were much younger. The intriguing thing was that she and I remembered the details very differently. Neither of us had a reason to remember it differently, but we did. Had it been a matter of consequence, which is wasn't, we would have both sworn in a court of law that our version of events was the correct one.

Yesterday, I stumbled upon this piece in the Huffington Post, where Dr Robert Lanza says some scientists are now suggesting that the past is not a fixed thing, and that whether things actually occurred in the past may depend on events in the future.

Imagine the ramifications of this -- and not just for the scriptwriters of Doctor Who. For example, that lie you told the wife about what you were doing last night may not have been a lie, because the past isn't set in stone. On a more serious level, a person convicted of and punished for a crime may, in fact, prove to be innocent once the past is properly paid out, or the dead may in fact prove to be alive. It's intriguing, and scary stuff.

But wait, there's more. Some scientists believe in the theory of parallel universes. And some people have taken this to mean that there are multiple but different versions of our "reality" out there -- in which case, presumably, there are many pasts and many futures.

This creates a whole new raft of mindblowing possibilities. As Sheldon Cooper in The Big Bang Theory puts it: "You know, it just occurred to me, if there are an infinite number of parallel universes, in one of them, there’s probably a Sheldon who doesn’t believe parallel universes exist."

Or, as I put it, "There's a Brett out there who's having a lot more fun than me. And I'm envious."

1. The world will not end in 2012, just like it doesn't end on December 31 every year. It will just be time to get a new calendar.

2. However, many people will die, and others will be sad because of this.

3. The fans of a small number of sporting teams will be very happy by year's end, but the fans of all the other teams will be somewhat disappointed.

4. It will be a year of turmoil.

5. A celebrity couple will get divorced very soon after they get married, and some people who have never met them will be inexplicably surprised and upset by this.

6. A former star of a "reality" television program will become briefly famous again because of some mundane thing that happened to him or her after he or she ceased to be famous the first time.

7. It will become apparent that a prominent figure is even more pompous and ridicuous than we originally imagined.

8. Apple will release a must-have item of personal technology that will very quickly be branded as being not as cool as everybody hoped it would be. Nevertheless, it will sell in its squillions.

9. This will occur more than once in 2012.

10. In late December, the internet will be awash with useless lists of 10 predictions for 2013.