Resolutions, predictions, and premonitions

First, here are my guaranteed true predictions:

I won't break any of my New Year’s resolutions.
The stock market will go up and the stock market will go down.
The nation-wide turnout for the November elections will definitely be less than 70% and maybe even 60%.
There will be no new major national political party.  I really hope I am wrong on this.
There will be updates for major fixes in almost all major computer software.

The first prediction is easy.  I won’t break any New Year’s resolutions because I don’t make them.  I do make plans and to-do lists, some of which I accomplish or do, but too often the items get pushed down and forgotten.

I have made a major commitment to be on a plant-based diet, aka vegan diet.  In one of those little bits of randomness, when I saw the animation in the DVD “Forks over Knives” of plaque going off an artery, I was hooked on trying it.  Essentially it’s avoiding meat, eggs, and dairy.  There went yogurt on my oatmeal and my once a week omelet.

For the most part I’ve stuck to it.  Within a week of starting, a friend sent us some Alaskan salmon.  It is a standing joke with my wife and I that I get the bones and she doesn’t.  Would you believe that almost every piece I ate had a bone and one had three!

The Freethinkers had their December monthly social at Gannucchi’s.  Just my luck that every item on the menu had cheese and/or meat.  So I went with a turkey sandwich, figuring that was the leanest meat that I could get.  The organizers of the monthly social plan to go back in January.  I think I better call ahead to Gannucchi’s.

We have our three-year-old grandson from Japan with us.  At one visit to the grocery store, he chose a sushi tray.  Four of the pieces had salmon.  But then he didn’t want those.  He wanted only the rice under the salmon.  So, Grandpa “had to eat” one of those pieces of salmon.

I hope I don’t get stuck in any of these situations again before my next cardiologist visit.  I would like to see an improvement in my flow rate.

The prediction on turnout is easy, because we have so many people who don’t bother to show up, even when they have registered to vote.  I don’t know if they are just plain lazy or don’t like any of the candidates.  They don’t seem to realize that by not voting, they increase the odds of seeing the candidate they favor least elected.

There will be no new major party unless some national leaders create it.  The Green Party has been around for years, but it has not become a major force in politics.  The Independent Party of Minnesota has been around since Jesse Ventura won as a Reform Party candidate.  There will be a “Forum for Building Progressive Political Power” on January 11 at “Copper Top”.  But will the usual “liberal” suspects be able to engage more than each other?  The only real hope is that a large number of “moderates” at the national level say enough is enough.  It happened in 1854 with only thirty people meeting in Ripon, Wisconsin.  The result was the Republican Party had a winning presidential candidate in 1860.  Aren’t we past due for a re-alignment?  Wouldn’t those who met in Ripon because they didn’t want to compromise on slavery be surprised to learn that their party has morphed into a party that doesn’t want to compromise on corporate interests?

What else can I predict than the no-brainers above?

No major advances will be made on abating global warming, at least at the government level.  Many people will do their part on using less energy, but these people will only make a small dent in the emissions.  Some municipalities or counties will plant more trees to absorb some of the carbon dioxide.

The sleeper may be China.  As the complaints increase about the air pollution in many Chinese cities, the authorities may make a major push for alternative energy sources.  This might include major grants to universities and companies to produce more efficient and cheaper energy sources.  If they do so, the United States will be a major loser on the manufacturing side.  Something the U.S. should have taken seriously, would you believe, in Jimmy Carter’s presidency!

There probably won’t be any major wars, but there will be plenty of local wars and terrorist attacks.  Let’s hope Russia can take sufficient steps to thwart any who want to upset the Winter Games at Sochi.

I seriously doubt that there will be any major propaganda push to negate the appeal of hardline Islamists.  The Qu’ran, like the Bible, certainly has many passages that call for peace and warn against violence.

My premonition is that China and the U.S. will continue their power play to assert their authority wherever they think their “vital interests” are at stake.  Even though it is much more in either’s interests to avoid conflict, hardliners in either capitol could escalate the situation to the point of open war.  Think Sarajevo and World War I.

I doubt if any leaders are going to step forward and say “enough”.  “We really need to cut down on military expenses.  We all could make better use of our resources.”

To end on a brighter note, may you have a happy and prosperous new year!

This was published in the 2014-01-02 edition of the Reader Weekly at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2014/01/02/2696_resolutions_predictions_and_premonitions.

Quips of the day - boom and hype

Paul Krugman used "prophets of boom" and "hype springs eternal" in his New York Times column of 2002-04-30, "Herd on the Street", also published in "The Great Unraveling", p. 75.

I think Krugman is a master of the English language as well as of economics.  Of the latter, his own Cassandra-like predictions have come true more often than not.  The people in power didn't listen to his warnings, he was right, and they still don't listen.

Quote of the day: On Flexibility

"Those who stay flexible and realize the world is dynamic are better judges than those who pretend it's built on certainties."
- Morgan Housel, The Motley Fool, "How to Know When a Talking Head is Full of Hot Air"

Although Housel is writing in the context of those making stock market predictions, it can apply to many other situations.  Just think of all those who think tax-cuts will solve all of our problems and of all those who think that more stimulus will solve all of our problems.  The real fix is probably some combination of the two applied in the proper areas and at the proper time.

He recommends "Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It?  How Can We Know?" by Philip Tetlock.  Read Housel's article for a quick summary of Tetlock's reasoning.

Neither the Duluth Public Library nor the UMD Library have this book, but the UMD Library has three political psychology books of which Tetlock is a contributor or an editor.

A skeptic had another premonition

I think it was Monday that I thought about Steve Cannon, a personality on WCCO-AM for many years. I was standing in our dining room when I thought about him, possibly in connection with the person I carpooled with. He alway had "The Cannon Mess" on as we drove home.

This morning I read that Steve Cannon died on Monday. I read it in the Duluth News Tribune but I can find no online reference. The only online reference I found in the Star Tribune was a tribute, "Remembering Steve Cannon: the king of talkers". http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentary/42630267.html

Do I have some psychic antenna that picked up that Steve Cannon died? I doubt it. The question is how many people thought about Steve Cannon on any given day over the past year or two or three. Nobody really knows because few people would make a remark about thinking of somebody they don't know.

And I've had premonitions about things that didn't happen. See "Premonitions and predictions".

And I had no premonition about falling backward on a stump. See "The Adventures of Superwoodsman, Episode 4".

Premonitions and predictions

A popular tale of a premonition that came true is about the traveler who decided not to board a ship or plane, and then the ship sank or the plane crashed. This seems to verify the strength of premonitions.

But what is rarely considered is the number of people who have premonitions of something happening but nothing happens.

I've been in the latter group many times in my life.

Over ten years ago I woke in the middle of the night feeling certain that a retired minister I knew had died. As far as I know, he is still alive and well.

A few nights ago the phone rang, and I was certain that it was a half-brother calling to say his mother had died. Well, I was partly right. It was my sister-in-law Jean calling to chat. My stepmother's name is also Jean.

Today I had premonitions that cutting down a tree at our cabin would not go well. The tree would fall on me. The tree might bounce and clunk me in the face. I might do something stupid with the chain saw. I would have liked my wife to have taken a movie of the tree falling, but I felt that would be a jinx.

The tree fell within ten degrees of where I wanted it to fall. I delimbed the tree and cut it into rounds suffering only a slightly stiff back from bending over.

But I won't give up on premonitions. I know it will snow in Duluth in the next two weeks.

Obtuse books can have interesting insights

I had to return the library book The Global Village by Marshall McLuhan and Bruce R. Powers, published in 1989. I would like to have reread it and write a more extensive review of it, but there are so many more books on my reading list.

In general I found it rather obtuse but it has some interesting observations and predictions on and off the mark. Their main thesis was that the tetrad would provide a reasoning tool to better understand developing trends. The opposing corners of the tetrad are enhance-obsolete and retrieve-reverse. Is this a two-dimensional dialectic, an either-or at another level?

p. 48 Music is right-brained and left-brained. We learn notes and then understand harmonic structure.

p. 60 "Propganda cannot succeed where people have no trace of Western culture."
- Jacques Ellul, Propaganda
McLuhan and Powers claim that literacy is required to be susceptible to propaganda. However, many illiterate people subscribed to the teachings of churches.

p. 84 Linking of military adventures to immigration. Immigration "will splinter the white Anglo-Saxon cast of U.S. government, education, and business structures and create a salad-like mélange of ethnic minorities without any single one being predominant."

"[M]ost native-born Americans will be unprepared for the new consumer economy which will emerge, offering service-related jobs not always suited to their intelligence or training. Ethnic diversity will help ignite a full-blown economy based on information exchange."

And much more.