Editorial: Apocalypse now If not, next year

We've had a lot of great stories in The Daily Post over the past year, articles that tell interesting stories, that affect us and our friends, families and neighbours, that prompt new thinking on local issues, that give new insight into local personalities, that have effected change and informed readers.
And we had a story about some dead birds.
The most-read story on our website in the past year, by a long margin, was a February article about piles of hundreds of dead sparrows appearing on Rotorua streets.
Its popularity may have had something to do with the idea that birds falling dead from the sky in great numbers is a sign of the apocalypse.
How do I know this? Because the sites linking to our story have names like thecomingcrisis and fulfilledprophecy.com.
Why do I bring this up now?
Because according to Harold Camping I won't get a chance tomorrow.
You may have thought Ken Ring was bad - but Harold Camping eats him for breakfast.
As my colleague Ingrid has pointed out in the adjacent column, the 89-year-old retired civil engineer from California has predicted that today, May 21 2011, is Judgment Day.
Jesus is coming to get the faithful, apparently at 10pm NZT, and whisk them off to Paradise.
After that it'll all go to Hell.
Whether or not you believe in the Rapture it's hard to take our Californian friend seriously.
The Rev. Tim LaHaye, co-author of the Left Behind series of Christian prophecy novels, was reported as saying that Camping "trivialises the very serious study of Bible prophecy" by ignoring Jesus' statement that no man knows the day nor the hour that Jesus will return.
The same report pointed out this isn't Camping's first apocalypse. That was predicted in 1994. If at first you don't succeed ... And if we're still here after 10pm today there's always next year. The Mayans predict the world will end on December 21, 2012. You might have seen the Hollywood preview of it.
I can't remember if it involved dead sparrows.
Anyway, we can state with absolute confidence that the world will not end tonight.
If we're wrong - feel free to point it out tomorrow.