xtcian

Good grief. You brighten my yesterday with adorable photos of your cheeky baby, and then you send a dark cloud with this downer. Good thing I took my Lexapro. Anyway, these are my predictions:

1. Osama bin Laden will be captured by the end of 2005.

2. The person responsible for the anthrax mail will be identified by the end of 2005 (this is probably wishful thinking).

3. The erection of the Freedom Tower (is that what they are calling it these days?) in NYC will prove to be a FATAL MISTAKE. It will be a "Come and get us! I dare you!" target for terrorists everywhere, there will be another horrible tragedy at that same site within the next 50 years, and everyone will wish that we had left what is essentially a huge graveyard alone. I do not understand why the city wants to desecrate that resting place by treating it as "valuable real estate". Are we really that capitalist-oriented that we can't leave a cemetery alone??? Mark my words, the Freedom Tower will be a prime example of: hurt me once, shame on you, hurt me twice, shame on me.

"It's hard to predict, especially the future."

I think you just gave up the plots of a whole TV season. What is California doing to you? Come back to your pumpkin patch!

Laurie, supposedly they know who the Anthrax guy is but they can't arrest him, or something. Maybe someone can elucidate this for us.

I predict the Heels will win another National Championship before the end of this decade.

I just bought a new Prius and I predict I'm going to save a buttload on gas!

no predictions, but a note on your #5--i recently saw a home innovations show that featured a motion sensor for your bathroom or kitchen sink (the home model of those public restroom thingies). i'm sure it's buggy and will be for a while, but i think it's fairly inexpensive and could save tons of water if put into wide usage.

Hi Laurie,
Your sentiment about preserving the former WTC as a graveyard is intended as kind and respectful, I am sure. But I'd like to offer my perspective because I work next to it and see it out my office window. Of course, so do tens of thousands of others, and when we are gone, there will be another generation of people living and working there, and a next, and so on. I think leaving a big empty space, or the current enormous four-story-deep hole, is rather like burying your loved one, not in a cemetery, but in the middle of your backyard. Why don't we bury our loved ones this way? If this was the societal norm the technical and health issues could be easily addressed. Moreover, you can ask this question to the surviving family member: How can you be so cold as to bury your husband (or child) in some cemetery, far from home, rather than put them right there next to the BBQ and the pool and the swingset they loved so very much and where you can see their grave every time you want work in the garden or have a party?

We have to look at the gaping hole - and half-naked sexpot tourists gaping at it - five days a week while I continue to serve the people of NYC. Making positive and future-oriented use of real estate is valuable not just in monetary terms, but in human ones, too.

My preference was, and is, to rebuild a safer version of the twin towers. And, yes, I would work at the top of them. That would have been a little too elegant a solution, I guess.

Ian -- my prediction is that, within 10 years, thousands of American, European, and Asian tourists each year will send postcards home from Iraq where they will be enjoying their stay very much.

Condoleeeeeeeeeezzzzzzzzzzzzzzzza Rice will be the first female (and first African American) Vice President of the US.

I predict that food in America will continue to improve. We will see more widely available and less expensive organic produce, hormone-free milk, and antibiotic-free meats. Americans will consume greater quantities of fresh whole foods and fewer packaged items, and more and more people will genuinely grow to prefer the taste of a fresh, real food to its canned or processed equivalent. Consumers will demand better. Restaurants will offer more sophisticated options, even outside of urban areas, and fine produce and artisanal cheeses will be easier to come by. Yum...

I predict a relentless rise in oil prices, temperatures, sea levels and international tensions.

I predict the shit will hit the fan within the next fifteen years.

And I predict that vague, highly-interpretable predictions (astrology, fortune cookies, religious prophecies) will remain more popular than scientifically-based ones.

I predict that wealthy people will have extraordinary accessibility to healthier, organic food and that our food supply will become so outrageously expensive that the average family will no longer be able to afford milk in their refrigerators.

RE: #5. Actually they already charge based on usage in the Southwest where I live, and it is not a trivial amount of money. A little clanging meter rings every tenth of a gallon while you are brushing your teeth.

I predict the middle class will continue to erode due to technological advancements and jobs moving overseas, thus creating an even more disgruntled and desperate class of Americans (a la Rifkin). In turn, social welfare, public education, universal healthcare, and law enforcement will be fighting a losing battle (unlike now?!).

In fact, even Ian, with his 5 kids (after 2 wonderful daughters, he and TB decide to give it that ole college try for a boy to groom to be point guard for UNC under Coach Patrick Sullivan; and they end up with triplets) feels this blog is taking its toll, and he outsources it to India.

I predict that if Pat Sullivan ever becomes the UNC head coach, I will have conniptions beyond imagination.

I further predict that phone usage will change dramatically in the next 5 years with phone that can connect via cellular or using VoIP through a WiFi connection, making a 'home number' obsolete.

> 6. An accidentally breakthrough in hydrogen
> production will make it easy to come by,
> without electricity or any other fossil
> fuels being used. This will make this
> current administration unwittingly prescient
> in concentrating on hydrogen-powered cars
> rather than hybrids. They will, however, take
> credit.

Slashdot pointed to this article, about a startup with a new way to generate hydrogen. No idea if this will make fuel cells practical and economical.

http://news.com.com/Start-up+coins+new+way+to+harvest+hydrogen/2100-7337_3-5783870.html?tag=nefd.top

Difficult to see, is the future. The Dark Side clouds everything - Yoda.

1. Five years from now, we will still be hearing "It's better than it was under Sadam Hussain."
2. Six years from now, Fox News will break the news that we have achieved victory in Iraq because "The rationale for the are was to make things better than they were before Saddam and we have done that by the recent appointment of an Islamic government in Iraq"
3. In 2012, the democratic party will still be walking around with their thumb in their ass and their genitals in a jar.
4. 2020 - the medium income for American workers when adjusted for inflation, will fall below that of Spain, Turkey and Canada.
5. 2030 - India, Pakistan and China will agree to form the largest free trade zone in the world, over 5 billion people.
2020 - Africa burns
2030 - the last million acres of Rain forest goes up in smoke in the Amazon.
2009 - The first major oil spill / environmental disaster occurs in ANWR. US Government picks up the bill to clean up the spill of oil that already belongs to the American public, but that we will pay for anyway at the gas pump.
2018 - Mexico announces that the number of elderly Americans living in that country has overwhelmed the country's welfare system and will begin deporting illegal immigrants back to the US.
2007 - Xtcian, gets a mention on CNN breaking news.
2025 - Lucy writes her first novel.

2050 - Rapture!!!! Unfortunately, I will be one of those tossed into the gapping chasm that opens up hell on Earth.

1) Bush will find a way to invade another country and murder tens of thousands for oil.

2) Halliburton stock prices will go up, refer back to prediction #1

3) Bush goes on trial for the murder of 53 Londoners after the current bogus story of 4 muslim teenage boys being responsible is disproven, which is slowly already happening.

4) Bush and the right-wing Christian neoKKKons will continue to take away the civil rights of people and force their Christian taliban ways on schools and the rest of society.

5) I expect the 2008 election to be stolen also much like the 2000 and 2004 elections were, with the push for nationwide electronic voting, it will be even easier for the GOP voting machine manufacturers like Diebold just to hit a button and delete whole northern cities of their votes, although some paper ballots will still exist for those Southern rednecks who can't operate voting machines.

6) I expect even more allegations of priests raping young boys, I also expect that to become a discipline in law schools, along with Environmental Law and Tax Law and other disciplines, many students will start to major in a new Christian Pedophile law as there is so much money to be made suing the hell out of the Christian sickos and their child-raping priests.

7) I also expect Bush, the CIA and the military to further their study of biological warfare weapons that are next to impossible to be detected by the human eye or nose, and they will continue to test these invisible weapons on the American people, like they did by using the postal service back in 2001 and 2002.

8) I expect more Republicunt CEOs to go to jail for stealing $ billions while wearing a suit and tie, and yes, many of these guilty CEOs will later be found to have connections to the coke-snorting idiot Bush.

9) I expect Bush to throw even more money at the jews in Israel and give more tanks and helicopters to Israel, and I expect Israel to kill even more innocent Palestinian children as the Israeli jews continue to build more illegal settlements and continue to violate international law.

10) I expect it to be discovered that Bush and his buddies were getting $$$ kickbacks from large companies located in America near the Mexican border to keep the border open for so many years so these right-wing companies could continue to exploit cheap labor.

11) As for the environment, I expect more acid rain, more holes in the ozone, more cases of asthma among children, more mysterious illnesses developing in babies, more extinction among species of animals all as Bush continues to roll back the environmental laws just so his buddies can make a quick $ buck.

12) Red Sox will have to wait another 80 or so years before they ever win the Championship again.

13) The NHL will be a thing of the past by 2010.

wish I had some of your stash, its getting kinda dry in piedmont kakalak

There's ALWAYS an escape route in the bad part of town. The ONLY way to get fast food in the hood is to double park your slide, survey the scene, look everyone in the eye, get your gryo/chicagoDog/poboy, and run red lights as needed.

Gravitons will reveal some of their secrets

Fusion reactors will become practical

In 30 years the pinky toe nail will have dissapeared completely