History and the New Year

I think it was Spider Robinson who once said, of Occam's Razor, "Old William's Blade doesn't shave every chin." In fact, I suspect you could define all the really interesting events of history as "what occurred instead of the most logical thing that could have happened." It is certainly true that reason will get you a good way, but we miss things that way too.

Right now, people are listing off their predictions for 2007. I'm going to make some too, with the caveat that I really have no freakin idea what will happen. Speaking as a non-chin shaver (thank G-d for that mercy!), I don't really anticipate being right. But it makes for an amusing entertainment to see how wrong you are.

Here are my bets for 2007, some of them even semi-serious:

1. At least two major interest rate hikes, and a whole lot of housing foreclosures. But McMansions will still look like a good idea to many dim people.
2. We will not begin pulling troops out of Iraq. We will however issue a stern series of resolutions to begin thinking about it.
3. We will begin moving more troops towards somewhere else in a manufactured crisis (Cuba? Iran? North Korea? The Canadian Oil Sands?) Personally, I'm betting Venezuela, but only so that our poor high school students can learn the geography of South America.
4. The winter of 2007 will kick over and most people will begin to believe, however feebly, in global warming and want to do something about it. They won't, though.
5. Israel and Syria will begin speaking. It won't help that much.
6. Energy prices will rise, and the economy will teeter, but hang on. China won't dump our sorry currency...yet.

My bet for 2007 is that we will call it "the year of hanging on by our fingernails."

If you'd like to see a better, more useful set of predictions by someone smarter about this sort of thing than me, check out Jeff Vail's site www.jeffvail.com

Have a happy New Year!

Sharon