JREF Swift Blog

Prophecy Results

Some of you may remember my article last year, wherein I invented a new form of mysticism related to iTunes, and shared my prognostications with the world. A year has passed, and it's time to to check my score. Though I don't actually claim to have any paranormal powers of prediction, I think you'll agree that I was quite accurate.

Here they are:

A major celebrity couple will break up amidst rumors of infidelity

Well, there were many this year in fact, but it was clearly Tiger Woods that was coming through so strongly.

An earthquake in South America will raise concerns over larger earthquakes in the future

I was only a few hundred miles off on this prediction, which actually referred to Honduras and Belize, in Central America. Residents have been warned to prepare for tsunamis, which often follow offshore events such as this one.

NASA will lose one of its spacecraft

While NASA spectacularly crashed a vessel into the Moon's surface in October, I'm sure it was the beleagured Mars Rover Spirit that was calling to me. With a name like that, it certainly makes sense. Poor Spirt broke though some crusty soil and became trapped in the sand underneath. NASA has tried for months to free her, but to no avail.

A blockbuster movie, years in the making, will unexpectedly flop at the box office

It may surprise many of you, but Avatar was a flop. 12 years in the making, a $73,000,000 take on opening weekend was more than 25% lower than anticipated. And if you had invested as much as $500,000,000 in a film, you might call it a flop too.

A major automaker will merge with another

Sure enough, one of the "big three," Chrysler, merged with Fiat in June. It really is hard to define "American car" these days.

A leading union will strike and picket lines will form with reports of violence

In an event that actually affected some aspects of TAM London, British postal workers voted to strike causing massive delays in the mail system.

There will be fewer hurricanes hitting the US this year

As predicted, 2009 was a very quiet year for hurricanes. There were nine named storms, which is only 60% of an average season.

The Internet will suffer a failure causing speculation of terrorism

While there were several smaller outages caused by such things as cut cables, the "denial of service attack" against Twitter, the ubiquitous micro-blogging service was exactly what I foresaw.

President Obama's approval rating will steadily decline throughout the year

Yes, as the blue line shows, enthusiasm for the Obama presidency sank as dissatisfaction rose.

A previously unknown species will be found in an unexpected place

In fact, an entire forest of new species were found using Google Earth.

So there it is, near 100% accuracy. Well, it would be if I were doing what many of the "professionals" do. While none of these events was too hard to imagine in the first place, my evidence is suspect in many of these examples. Consider the following:

Does Tiger Woods really count as a "celebrity couple?"

There was no major earthquake in South America, and the Mars Rover Spirit isn't lost, just stuck.

Chrysler and Fiat did merge, but there were talks about mergers long before Jan 4, 2009.

I could find no reports of actual violence in the British postal strike.

There were fewer hurricanes, a direct hit, but it was really a 50/50 shot, and I could have compared it to any year I wanted if it had turned out to be an average year.

As for the Internet, it suffers outages all the time, and these days, whenever anything goes wrong, "terrorism" springs to mind as an explanation. Note that I didn't say it would be caused by terrorism.

President Obama's decline was easy to predict, given the state of the economy, but was it really steady? Yeah, I have to admit it was, but again, an easy one.

And for new species, new species are ALWAYS being discovered. Finding a new forest with Google Earth, however, is the cool part of that story, and I didn't mention it at all.

So if someone offers you a prediction or prophecy, take my advice: accept nothing less than lottery numbers. If they win, share a bit with the "psychic." And if they don't, you'll understand why the psychic wasn't playing alongside you.

Many of you posted your own predictions in last year's comments. How did you do?