Isaac Asimov's 1964 Essay on Life in 2014

In 1964, Isaac Asimov wrote about life in 2014 via a visit to the 2014 World's Fair. His predictions were rather good on several counts.

(Tip of the cap to Maria Satterwhite.)

Predictions for the Future (Circa 1900)

Here are some predictions for the future that were published in Ladies' Home Journal in 1900. Some of the predictions were spot on (or even not ambitious enough), but we haven't yet thrown out a certain three letters from the English alphabet, and that's a good thing for those of us who like to play Scrabble...

(Tip of the cap to Ellie [Park] Pattie.)

1982 Study by Institute for the Future

Wow, this 1982 study by Institute for the Future is almost dead-on correct. Just wow.

They did get the bit about the N-party system wrong, however.

(Tip of the cap to Jimmy Lin.)

Predicting Life in 2000 During 1910

Here are some postcards from 1910 that forecast what life was supposed to be like in 2000.

Some of the forecasts are actually pretty spot on.

Some quick googling is not helping me figure out much of anything about Villemard other than the fact that he was a French artist to whom these postcards are attributed. And I was hoping for a wikipedia entry. :)

(Tip of the cap to Karen Daniels.)

So Much for my American League "Comeback Player of the Year" Prediction

Some of you might remember that I recently predicted that Manny Ramirez will win the American League Comeback Player of the Year award. Well, never mind.

As it turns out, Manny seems to have run afoul of Major League Baseball's drug policy again and has decided to screw it and retire as an active player.

It looks like my preseason baseball predictions are well on their aware to being an epic failure.

Oh, and for those of you familiar with certain happenings back in the day at Beverly High, maybe the most appropriate one-line comment is: "Where have you gone, Rico Brogna"? (Most of you won't understand this comment, but a select few will.)

Play Ball!

Opening Day for the 2011 Major League Baseball season is tomorrow (March 31st) --- as opposed to Tomorrow --- and I'll be watching the Dodgers-Giants game. Kershaw versus Lincecum: Hell yes!

Anyway, here are some predictions for the 2011 seasons. Let's see if I fail as spectacular in my prognostications as I have in the past.

National League

National League West: Giants, Dodgers, Rockies, Padres, Diamondbacks

National League Central: Brewers, Reds, Cubs, Cardinals, Astros, Pirates

National League East: Phillies, Braves, Marlins, Nationals, Mets

Wild Card: Braves

NLCS: Phillies versus Brewers [Phillies win 4-1; Roy Halladay gets LCS MVP]

MVP: Ryan Braun

Cy Young Award: Roy Halladay [Tim Lincecum is my top non-Phillie]

Rookie of the Year: Brandon Belt

Manager of the Year: Ron Roenicke

Comeback Player of the Year: Matt Kemp

Team on the rise: Milwaukee Brewers

Team on the decline: St. Louis Cardinals


American League

American League West: Athletics, Rangers, Angels, Mariners

American League Central: Twins, White Sox, Tigers, Indians, Royals

American League East: Red Sox, Yankees, Blue Jays, Rays, Orioles

Wild Card: Yankees

ALCS: Athletics versus Red Sox (Athletics win 4-3; ALCS MVP is Josh Willingham)

MVP: Adrian Gonzalez

Cy Young Award: CC Sabathia

Rookie of the Year: Mike Moustakas

Manager of the Year: Bob Geren

Comeback Player of the Year: Manny Ramirez

Team on the rise: Oakland Athletics

Team on the decline: Tampa Bay Rays



World Series: Oakland versus Philadelphia. Philadelphia wins 4-2 (and Roy Halladay gets the World Series MVP award)



I'm sure that most of my predictions will be wrong. Here are some predictions from ESPN's "experts".

Nobel Prize Predictor

Thomson Reuters (who produce the Web of Science, among other things) have a Nobel Prize Predictor. (I've linked directly to the physics page, but one can find interesting predictions in the other ones as well---e.g., Eric Lander in Biology/Medicine.) Michael Berry ought to already have a Physics Nobel. My Mathematical Institute colleague Roger Penrose is unsurprisingly also on the physics list. It would be especially awesome if he won, because then the department would almost certainly have a big Nobel Party!

Last Expo Standing

The Daily Something wonders who will be the last Expo standing. My prediction is Jon Rauch.

(Tip of the cap to Rob Neyer.)

Fearless Forecast: 2010 Baseball Season

Here are the predictions for the 2010 baseball season from various folks who work for ESPN. And here are mine:

American League:

AL East champion: New York Yankees
AL Central champion: Minnesota Twins
AL West champion: Texas Rangers
Wild Card: Boston Red Sox

Champion: New York Yankees (sigh...)

Most Valuable Player: Joe Mauer, Twins
Cy Young Award: Felix Hernandez, Mariners
Rookie of the Year: Brian Matusz, Orioles

Time on the rise: Cleveland Indians
Team on the decline: The The Angels Angels of Anaheim


National League:

NL East champion: Atlanta Braves
NL Central champion: St. Louis Cardinals
NL West champion: Los Angeles Dodgers
Wild Card: Philadelphia Phillies

Champion: Atlanta Braves

Most Valuable Player: Albert Pujols, Cardinals
Cy Young Award: Roy Halladay, Phillies
Rookie of the Year: Jason Heyward, Braves

Time on the rise: Washington Nationals (you heard it here first; jump on the bandwagon while you still can)
Team on the decline: Chicago Cubs


World Series: Braves over Yankees in 7 games


Update (4/03/10): Here is ESPN's collective wisdom about the prospective 2010 award winners in baseball.

Baseball Call of the Year

Wow. Just wow. I'm not even going to describe this, so you're just going to have to follow that link and listen.

(Tip of the cap to Rob Neyer.)

2009 Baseball Predictions

The 2009 baseball season started yesterday with a 4-1 Braves victory over the Phillies. Derek Lowe turned in a stellar performance as the starter, and closer Mike Gonzalez was a little bit less stellar. Also, Brett Myers has the early lead in homeruns allowed. :)

Here are my fearless predictions for 2009:

National League:

East: Mets
Central: Cubs
West: Dodgers
Wild Card: Giants
NL winner: Mets

Of the above predictions, only my Wild Card one departs from most of the pundits. The Giants have an excellent starting staff, and I think that position players Travis Ishikawa and Pablo Sandoval are going to get really good really fast to make up for much of the weakness in the rest of the offense.

MVP: David Wright
Cy Young: Johan Santana
Rookie of the Year: I'm not sure, but I'll say Ishikawa. (Is Sandoval eligible? Doesn't he have too many plate appearances? At least one web site thinks he's a rookie.) I'll mention Cameron Maybin as well, but I'm not convinced he'll be the best rookie, even though he might well have the best career among the rookies.

Manager of the Year: Bruce Bochy (the manager of the surprise team)
Team on the rise: Giants
Team on the decline: Phillies
First manager fired: Dusty Baker

American League:

East: Yankees
Central: Indians
West: Athletics (after a fierce battle with The The Angels Angels of Anaheim)
Wild Card: Rays
AL winner: Yankees

These predictions are pretty consistent with those of the pundits, though I think most of them have the Angels over the Athletics.

MVP: Evan Longoria
Cy Young: CC Sabathia
Rookie of the Year: Matt Wieters (even though he's starting the year in the minors)

Manager of the Year: Bob Geren (the manager of the surprise team)
Team on the rise: Oakland (check out their young starting pitching); honorable mention to Texas because of their young offense (though I just can't trust them to develop any pitching)
Team on the decline: Angels
First manager fired: Ozzie Guillen

World Series: Mets over Yankees in 5 games


One final prediction: As usual, most of my predictions will turn out to be completely wrong by the end of the year.

Fearless baseball postseason predictions

Now that all of the teams in Major League Baseball's postseason tournament have been determined, it is now time to give my fearless postseason predictions.

National League:

NLDS: Cubs over Dodgers in 4 games (I'm sorry to say, but my mind just won't let my heart predict a victory for the Dodgers) and Phillies over Brewers in 5 games

ALDS: Angels over Red Sox in 5 games and Rays over White Sox in 4 games.

NLCS: Phillies over Cubs in 6 games (NLCS MVP: Jimmy Rollins)

ALCS: Angels over Rays in 5 games (ALCS MVP: Torii Hunter)

World Series: Angels over Phillies in 6 games (World Series MVP: Mark Texeira)



However, I wouldn't really trust my predictions given some utter failures in my preseason predictions.

I got two of the NL playoff teams right (Dodgers and Brewers), though I thought the Brewers would actually win the division. My other two (Mets and Diamondbacks) competed until the very end. My NL MVP (David Wright), Cy Young (Johan Santana), and Rookie of the Year (Joey Votto) predictions all produced solid choices who won't actually win. Though my Cy Young choice will probably finish third in the voting (he deserves to finish second) and my ROY choice will finish second. (My MVP choice probably should finish second but will probably be in the lower reaches of the top 10.) My NL team on the rise was the Brewers, so I was solid there. My choice was Giants as team on the decline was reasonable, though some of their young players definitely matured slightly faster than I thought, so they may well be my NL team on the rise for 2009.

In the AL, I got two very obvious teams right for the playoffs: The Angels and Red Sox. My other two were the Yankees (giggle), who I thought would be the Wild Card team, and the Indians. My AL team on the rise was the Rays, so I was spot on with that one. (Hell, they did even better than I thought.) My team on the decline was the Twins, though I considered choosing the Orioles, which were my "honorable" mention here. I failed on that one. Also, my MVP (Travis Hafner) and Cy Young (Erik Bedard) choices were epic failures. Ouch! My ROY prediction of Daric Barton also failed miserably, though at least my honorable mention Evan Longoria will actually win the award.

Anyway, I certainly hope I'm wrong about the NL playoffs. The Cubs are a better team than we are, but let me raise my latte cup in a toast to small sample sizes!

Fearless baseball predictions (2008 season)

Here are some fearless predictions for the 2008 baseball season:

National League:

MVP: David Wright
Cy Young: Johan Santana
Rookie of the Year: Joey Votto (honorable mention for Chase Headley)

Division Winners: Mets, Brewers, Dodgers
Wild Card: Arizona Diamondbacks

National League Champion: New York Mets (though hopefully it will be the Dodgers)

Team on the Rise: Milwaukee Brewers
Team on the Decline: San Fransisco Giants (yes, despite their poor 71-91 record in 2007, I really do expect them to be a good deal worse this year)


American League:

MVP: Travis Hafner
Cy Young: Erik Bedard
Rookie of the Year: Daric Barton (honorable mention for Evan Longoria)

Division Winners: Angels, Red Sox, Indians
Wild Card: Yankees

American League Champion: Cleveland Indians

Team on the Rise: Tampa Bay Rays (note the new name)
Team on the Decline: Minnesota Twins (though only for one year; they'll already start to rise again in 2009). I considered listing the Orioles, but I think their fall from 2007 to 2008 will be less precipitous than that of the Twins.


World Series winner: Cleveland Indians

OSCAR Nominations (2008)

The 2008 OSCAR nominations have now been released, and I'm again going to make some fearless predictions. As I recall, I did much better last year than I did in 2006.

Thankfully, there were at least a few sensible nominations--especially when it comes to giving Juno recognition. That film was awesome!

Anyway, here are my predictions and my comments on who will win and who should win.

Best actor: I haven't yet seen any of the films with nominations, though I do want to see Sweeney Todd. (Do any of the locals reading this want to go with me?) I'll predict that Johnny Depp will win just because he's awesome.

Best supporting actor: I haven't seen any of these films yet, so I'll pull a prediction of Philip Seymour Hoffman (for his performance in Charlie Wilson's War) out of my ass. OK, this is an education guess. By the way, did you know that it's now written into the U.S. constitution that Seymour Hoffman is required to appear in one out of every five indie films that are released in the U.S.? (FYI: I adjusted the joke because I can't remember who the other guy was, and I couldn't think of another canonical person in the time I wanted to spend on this.)

Best actress: Ellen Page should win this for her performance in Juno. Hands down. Not that I'm biased when it comes to this film or anything... Anyway, I think that she should win, and I'll go ahead and predict that she would win.

Best supporting actress: Cate Blanchett for I'm Not There will and should win because she was (by far!) the best Bob Dylan in the whole damned film. (By the way, I'll post a review of this film at some point. RIP, Heath Ledger.)

Best animated film: Ratatouille will and should win. I wanted to see Persepolis, but I think it made it into indie theatres after I fled the country. Maybe it will come out in the UK at some point?

Best art direction: I'm going to guess Sweeney Todd on this one.

Best cinematography: I'll guess No Country For Old Men here. By the way, I have heard some people who love this film and others who hate it. Opinions on this film appear to be pretty polarized, so I'm curious if any of you have any thoughts on this. (I haven't seen it and I'm trying to decide if I should.) Is what's-his-face who the Coen brothers always off in this film?

Costume design: I'll guess Elizabeth: The Golden Age on this one, but I don't have an opinion.

Best directing: I'll guess No Country for Old Men on this one. (Hey, Juno got nominated here as well, but I'm not sure if I'd be able to say it's the directing that stood out. How can a movie-watcher judge something like that?)

Best documentary feature: Sicko is the one that will win, but the movie that should win (The King of Kong) wasn't even nominated. It's a fucking crime!

Best short documentary: I have no idea. And when I have no idea, I simply pull something out of my ass. So let's say that Sari's Mother will win. I should check my "predictions" from 2006 and 2007 to see if I did comparably well with the stuff I pulled out of my butt versus the opinions that I actually had.

Film Editing: I'm not sure. Let's just say No Country For Old Men.

Foreign Language Film: Hmmm... I saw a lot more of these in 2006 (including 4 in a row at the end of the year) than 2007. Let's pull The Counterfeiters out of my ass.

Makeup: Hey, look--Norbit actually got nominated for an OSCAR! How in Hell did that happen? It can't win, though, because that's the 6th sign of the apocalypse and we haven't yet seen any of the first 5 signs and I simply they won't occur fast enough for this to work out. Pirates of the Carribean: At World's End seems a safe bet here.

Music (score): Why don't they have a category for best soundtrack? Because then Juno could have been nominated for that! Let's say Atonement is going to win this. Hmmm... I feel like I am pulling more things out of my butt this year than I did last year. I guess my favorite films correlated a bit more poorly this year with the ones the Academy considers hip?

Music (song): Wow, those days when a song from a Disney film won this category every year seem forever ago now, don't they? Three songs came from the same film (just like in The Lion King), so it's probably a pretty safe bet that one of those will win (not to mention the fact that these folks got lots of victories in this category for their work on Disney films). So let's say "That's How You Know" from Enchanted because I think the Academy likes mushy love songs and (based on the title) I strongly suspect this is one of those.

Best picture: Juno will and should win. (Well, I am actually tempted to predict that No Country For Old Men will win, but I'm still going with Juno out of loyalty.)

Best animated short film: Let's pull Meme Les Pigeons Vont Au Paradis (Even Pigeons Go To Heaven) out of my ass because I like the title. By the way, roosters go to Hell (the goats need company).

Best live-action short film: Let's see--yet another category where I haven't seen anything. Let's try Il Supplente (The Substitute).

Sound Editing: The Transformers will and should win. Booyah!

Sound Mixing: The Transformers will and should win. Booyah! (I love copy and paste.)

Visual Effects: The Transformers will and should win. Booyah! (I love copy and paste.) They're more than meets the eye, and the sequel might even have Shockwave and Soundwave in it. (This better happen.)

Writing (adapted screenplay): Let's predict Atonement (though No Country For Old Men is another tempting one).

Writing (original screenplay): The winner here is Juno hands down. This film probably has the best writing of any movie I've seen in years. And I think the Academy will agree with me on this one. By the way, I am also heartened that Ratatouille got nominated. It's very pleasing to see an animated film considered in this category.


I wasn't particularly up for Shenanigans tonight (we had our weekly formal dinner in Somerville tonight), though I did get a chance to hang out a bit with my friends. Also, there was a mini-concert (with the sister of a Somervillian singing some classical and Jazz music, including "Moondance"---which briefly made me think of the Ath, except this was a live performance, which was sweet). After that, I spent a bit of time with my friends and headed back to my apartment to play Zelda. (I'm not sure if they went pub crawling or not, but I wasn't up for hanging out with even a moderately large group tonight. There were just one or two specific people to whom I wanted to talk/shoot the breeze a bit before I went back home.)

Baseball update

Well, the baseball postseason is upon us and I am currently listening to the end of the Rockies-Phillies game.

I had been busy for several hours. First, I met the new math undergrads --- in particular, the ones I will be mentoring. They seem very nice, and they also seemed very happy with the fact that my style is much more informal than that of the stereotypical Oxford tutor. I really like being able to live in residence and interact with the students so closely. It's very much like an RAship, and this whole mechanism is making it much easier for me to meet other people in Somerville, including people in other subject areas who I basically wouldn't meet at all in other circumstances. Then I had dinner, and sat near one of my mentees, a postdoc, and a stray first-year grad student in medicine who had spilled over from the medicine table. [The tables were organized by subject area tonight.] The medical student was really cool, though it will likely be hard to convince someone with her schedule to play D & D even though she played back in the day. (We also talked about music and the Caltech vs. MIT prank rivalry for a fair bit.)

After dinner was a gathering of the Senior Common Room (in the Senior Common Room... recall that it refers to both the room and the group), and I had the chance to meet up with the Tutor assigned as my mentor. He was selected because he too emigrated from the United States, and it appears that he has extra adaptors and knows where to get more! Also, because he's from Boston, I asked him about the Red Sox and he is indeed a huge baseball fan, so then we proceeded to talk a lot of baseball. He has the MLB video internet package (I have the audio one this year and will get the video one next year). It looks when he shows up, there's going to be lots of baseball discussion flying back and forth. So, anyway, I'm basically extremely pleased with this whole setup. I'm not sure if I can make the RPG thing tomorrow because of a small gathering of Tutors to try to meet some more of them (that needs to get priority), but things are going very well and I hopefully should be able to hang out with some people around here. Oh, and basically everybody I met (including the undergrads!) thought I was a new freshman before they knew better. It was awesome! We were at the pre-dinner drinks (it's Oxford policy to get the freshman drunk before classes start), and several of the frosh asked me if I was a new freshman. Graduate students, postdocs, and (least surprisingly) faculty have also confused me for a new frsoh. I've been enjoying this...

In terms of baseball, the Rockies beat out the Padres for the NL West Wild Card in a game that was an instant classic. I wish I had a chance to see it or listen to it! The Rockies-Phillies series is the one that I find the most interesting. I could go for either of them winning, but I think I'd like to see the underdog Rockies get to the World Series. (The Rockies just won game 1.) The other series pits the Cubs against the Diamondbacks. The Diamondbacks are boring, so I'd much rather have the Cubbies win. In the AL, the Yankees are playing the Indians, and I want the Yankes to get their asses kicked! (By the way, I was remarking to that Tutor that he must really have taken offense when the Brits called him a Yankee. It's bad enough to call a Dodger fan that name, but to do it to a Red Sox fan is just horrible!) I'd prefer the Angels to beat the Red Sox, but I could handle any AL team except the Yankees in the World Series. My preference would be for Rockies vs. Angels and for the Angels to win, but there are a lot of other combinations that would also be very cool.

It's a bit tougher to say who I think will win. I'll guess that the Yankees will beat Cleveland in 4 and that Anaheim (or the LAA of A, if you prefer) will beat Boston in 5 games. I think the Rockies will be the Phillies in 4 games (I would have said 5 before today's victory) and that the Cubs will beat the Diamondbacks in 5 games. In the ALCS, I think the Yankees will beat the Angels in 5 games and that the Cubs will beat the Diamondbacks in 6 games. That would leave a Yankees-Cubs World Series, and I'm going to be crass and predict that the Yankees will win in 6 games. That's not what I want to happen, but they seem to be the strongest team by far based on the last few months.

I'll shortly write an entry on my predictions for baseball award winners (maybe in a few days?) and a review of Avenue Q.