Predictions

Fearless forecasts, guaranteed 100% reliable

by Bryan Zepp Jamieson

1/2/02

I hit on the idea of making some predictions for 2002, and played around with it for a bit. After a while, I decided I was amazingly inept at making predictions, and thought, well, the net ought to have all kinds of interesting and/or goofy predictions, and I’ll just collect some of those. My first prediction: this will probably be the lamest column I’ll write this year.

After a half an hour, I concluded that either predictions or the net aren’t what they used to be. While there were predictions from vedic astrologers and reassurances from nervous stockbrokers that 2002 would see a strong recovery, most were of the prosaic variety. Tide tables were a big item: if you need to know when morning high tide for August 3^rd, 2002 on the Thames at Bishop’s Gate will be I know just where to send you. Planetary movements and eclipses were other hot ticket items in the premonition biz this holiday season, and if you are a writer stuck for an idea of how to get your hero out of a scrape and get the natives to bow down and worship him, here’s a hint: there’s a total eclipse of the sun in December. All you need to do is invent a cannibal island and stick it in the path of totality, and then come up with a plausible reason why anyone would want to go there. If you can, you’re already ahead of some dinosaur movies I could name. My predictions: No vedic astrologers will be eaten by dinosaurs, no matter how much we might hope.

Orvetti has put his website back on line, and not surprisingly, the Washington Times writer sees big things for the GOP in the November elections. One interesting prediction is that there will be November elections this year. Given the nature of this administration, and the way it took power, that’s not a given. My prediction: The prez will say or do something extremely stupid, and the press will pretend to not notice. It might be inane. It might be fatuous. It might reveal a deep inner ignorance. But it will definitely be the press doing the ignoring.

The weather forecasters at Colorado State who study tropical atmospheres predict an extremely heavy Atlantic hurricane season next year. Half again normal levels. Since they essentially nailed it on their predictions last year (more hurricanes than normal) people should pay attention. (To Americans, it didn’t seem like a big hurricane season because only one tropical storm – Allison – hit the American mainland. Of course, for a little tropical storm, it sure did a lot of damage.) My prediction: all Atlantic hurricanes will spin in a counter-clockwise direction.

Wrestling fans had a page devoted to upcoming matches. My prediction: the top rated "good guy" wrestler will meet the top rated "bad guy wrestler" and lose his title through flagrant cheating by the bad guy, and a grudge rematch will be arranged.

There were all sorts of predictions from the tech sector, although most were concerned more with rebounding on the NASDAQ than with what interesting new gadgets might show up. My prediction: your computer will lock up for no apparent reason. You will mumble a few words that you may or may not regret knowing, and reboot. By the end of the day, you will have essentially forgotten that it happened.

There are predictions by individuals on the net of amazing advances in genetics. Goats are being bred whose milk will contain broad-spectrum prophylactics against a wide variety of diseases for humans. The race to be the first lab to create glowing green monkeys continues. I’m not making that up. There are predictions that scientists will mess with the genetic code of horse and dogs, creating smarter animals, perhaps capable of conditional reasoning. My prediction: If you grab the tail of a cat who knows you quite well – do this with a cat who knows you well, or you will get hurt – if you grab the tail, and hold it in front of the cat’s face, he will proceed to lick furiously at the tail.

There are predictions that with enhanced search abilities, within months we will spot the first terrestrial planet with an atmosphere with large amounts of oxygen, a signature sign of life. We’ve already spotted a terrestrial planet ("terrestrial" meaning small and hard, as opposed to large, cold gasbags like Jupiter or Rush Limbaugh) with a sulphur dioxide atmosphere. My prediction: it will be overcast whenever something interesting, like the Leonid meteor shower or the Northern Lights, occurs in the local night sky

DNA research will make it possible for any individual in the world to know exactly how near or far a relationship he or she has with any other individual. We will unlock the mysteries of how all the world’s cultures arose, and from where. There is one man in England who is proven to be a descendent of an 8,000 year old petrified mummy found in a cave near the small town in which the man lived. My prediction: you will continue to accumulate lone socks in your laundry room, and never, ever find their mates.

As broadband increases, the amount and variety of information and entertainment available through your computer will far exceed even the wildest dreams of science fiction writers a generation ago. At your fingertips there will be entire cultures, national libraries, live and recorded performances of some of the greatest artists and actors of our time. My prediction: You won’t get to see it because your kids will hog the system to play video tapes and gossip about classmates in the chat rooms.

Every elected representative will have information on voting record and policies on the web, and there will be independent sources, such as opensecrets.org, to validate or deny the claims made by the politicians. One touch of the screen will reveal every vote a senator made, every decision on a particular topic a judge ruled on. My prediction: Most people will vote for reasons that fit quite comfortably on a bumper sticker, and be outraged and confused when they get precisely the type of leadership they deserve.

The nature and extent of human knowledge, I am told, is doubling every three years. In the past year, we’ve made the amazing discovery that protocells form, not in the warm saline baths of the oceans, but in the thin, cold gases that lie between the stars. Life on earth, we believe, may have ridden in on the back of a comet. My prediction: some group will sue to dismiss any elementary school teacher who mentions this to his class. ‘Tain’t biblical, you know.

The world is a much more dangerous place than it was just one year ago. Indeed, it may be more dangerous than at any time in human history. The possibility of a nuclear conflagration, napping in the public consciousness since the imagined safety of the Soviet collapse, has been resurrected, not only by the saber-rattling of India and Pakistan, but by the strange, cold isolationist regime that successfully overthrew the United States. Horrible diseases lurk in both the flasks of cold, stony-eyed apparatchiks of national governments, and in those of wild-eyed and paranoid fanatics out to save the world by destroying it. Global warming threatens our food supply, as we continue to destroy the tropical forests, our greatest reservoirs of life, and pollute the oceans and our numbers continue implacably upwards. 6.2 billion and counting. My prediction: We’ll muddle through. Not because of forbearance and wisdom, even though we keep showing that we have it when we are pressed, but simply because we are primates, and have that good old fashioned monkey curiosity. We all want to see what happens next, and if there is one thing that can be said about 2002, it’s that it will be followed by 2003, a year of even greater thrills and mystery. We can’t stand not knowing.

I don’t know if we’ll ever outgrow the urge to hoot and wave our sticks at the leopard. But as long as we can look up at the stars at night, and wonder, then there is hope for us.