In praise of … doomsday

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/19/in-praise-of-doomsday

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Imagine all the people, living for today. John Lennon sang the words, but Harold Camping – who died last weekend at 92 – did something about it. He predicted the world's imminent end so regularly that you could almost set your watch by it. Invoking scripture and a 7,000-year-old clock which he said had started ticking as the rains closed in on Noah, the edict to live every day like your last came and went ahead of 21 May 1988, again with the publication of his book 1994?, and yet again in the run-up to 21 May 2011. After the fire and the brimstone failed to show up, he set his next and final doomsday as 21 October of that same year, but this time pencilled in a lower-key affair, in which the world would end not with a bang, but a whimper. It takes a certain something to keep going after being proved wrong, wrong and wrong again. But then doomsayers have a comfort that few forecasters do: they really do know they will be right in the end.

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