Merry second-day-of-Christmas, a.k.a. Boxing Day, a.k.a. Two Turtle Doves Day! The week between Christmas and New Years’ is a good time to look back on the year that has gone before and to look forward to whatever might be next.
We’ll do that on the Cranach blog, building up to one of the great contests of the blogosphere: Our readers’ annual predictions for the New Year and our virtual prize to whoever had the best prediction for the Old Year.
On New Year’s Eve, the last day of the year (next Monday, December 31), we will post a review of readers’ predictions for 2018. We will then proclaim the winner for best prognosticator, who will win no prize, just our acclaim and bragging rights for the year ahead.
The next day, on New Year’s Day, you will be able to post, as comments, your predictions for 2019. They can be about current events, political developments, sports phenomena, scientific discoveries, cultural changes, or you name it. The winning entries will be predictions that are specific, unlikely, and surprising. General truths (“the world will continue turning”) will not score as highly as detailed, out-of-the-blue prophecies (“the world will turn upside down”).
And, don’t worry, the Deuteronomy 18 rule will not be in effect. These predictions should be historical projections, with no claims to supernatural revelation.
So be thinking about what you think will happen. And tell your friends to join in.
We’ll let Scott Adams, the Dilbert cartoonist, have the first prediction: “Scientists will eventually stop flailing around with solar power and focus their efforts on harnessing the only truly unlimited source of energy on the planet: stupidity. I predict that in the future, scientists will learn how to convert stupidity into clean fuel.”
Illustration: Janus [the Roman god of transitions, with one face that looks to the past and one face that looks to the future], Vatican Museum, photo by Loudon dodd [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], from Wikimedia Commons
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