{"id":13276,"date":"2015-01-03T06:00:24","date_gmt":"2015-01-03T11:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/?p=13276"},"modified":"2015-01-02T14:43:10","modified_gmt":"2015-01-02T19:43:10","slug":"another-precog-in-the-machine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/2015\/01\/03\/another-precog-in-the-machine\/","title":{"rendered":"Another precog in the machine"},"content":{"rendered":"
\""The<\/a>

“The Crystal Ball,” 1902. Painting (detail): John William Waterhouse<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

Even though most people have at best a shaky grip on the past, and may be entirely at sea in the present, this stops no one from confidently forecasting the future. And the New Year is the prime time for people to trot out their notions of what the year ahead might hold.<\/p>\n

MarketWatch, <\/a>for example, predicts 3% growth in the economy and accelerating growth in wages. If that sounds a little tame, Geek.com touts “10 bold predictions for 2015<\/a>.” Over-the-skin electrodes will hint at neural control for the masses, they prophesy. Yikes.<\/p>\n

The futurists of The Daily News<\/a> went back to the 1989 movie “Back to the Future 2” to assess how well it did at predicting 2015. Flat screens, drones, video-conferencing–check. Hoverboards, self-lacing shoes and flying cars–sadly not.<\/p>\n

My Virgo horoscope for 2015<\/a> from GaneshaSpeaks tells me “During the first quarter of the year, you shall be preoccupied with work in order to achieve your goals.” Sadly so.<\/p>\n

Psychics.co.uk predicts<\/a> “major volcanic eruptions in Japan and Hawaii” and “strange fluctuations in the Earth\u2019s magnetic field,” as well as “many countries may see terrorist attacks from loan<\/i> gunmen”–bankers presumably, who do not respond well to magnetic fluctuation.<\/p>\n

Finally–perhaps very finally–Coast to Coast AM host George Noory predicts that a small asteroid will hit the planet<\/a>. This would be in keeping with his hosting of an Auld Lang Syne singing contest among his callers, and his annual roundup of “The Year in UFOs and ETs.”<\/p>\n

I confidently predict that we will all go through the same exercise again in 2016. Or we will unless Noory is proven right in a big way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Even though most people have at best a shaky grip on the past, and may […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[6128],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13276"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13276"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13276\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13278,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13276\/revisions\/13278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}