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| Fellow prognosticator Punxsutawney Phil having his prediction read at Gobbler's Knob, PA. |
1. The presidential race in the US. This is the oddest election I have ever seen. My prediction is that a Republican is almost a certainty - after two terms of Democratic leadership, the choice of the people will be a republican candidate for a lot of reasons... but whom you may ask? After much deep pondering on this, a figure emerged from the haze and I saw the outline of an HP calculator with a giant B on the screen. Either some kind of stack overflow or - a Bush / Fiorina win. Although a Trump / Clinton presidency would be far more interesting / entertaining - and probably what people would vote for if given the chance because it would turn the evening news into the highest rated sitcom TV has ever seen... alas, an impossibility. But I do think - marketing gold for a new show based around that theme.
2. The coordinates of Amelia Earhart's Lockheed Electra may remain a mystery but I think search teams will finally locate MH370. Hopefully the new aircraft satellite tracking system will prevent this sort of tragedy in the future. Why didn't we have that already?
3. Time for a seismic breakthrough in social media inter-connectivity. Something like, but bigger than a Fitbit, that allows you to find people to jog with by tapping on a map and spinning a virtual date and time wheel, or virtual reality headsets that plug into a virtual world communities so throngs of people could debate or make speeches - huge numbers could attend and then vote on something... So... new concepts of significant social import will emerge as a result of clever app writers connecting dots in new ways. Yup, that's what I predict.
4. Sea trains. Yup, this is one that's been rolling around the old bean for a decade now... If we can send an unmanned re-supply rocket ship to the International Space Station... Convoys of container ships afloat as a sort of "sea train" delivering cargo to ports with only a single pilot ship being manned and 5 or 6 unmanned motorized hulls in a convoy. The cargo ships would have an engine room a small crews quarters for emergency manual operation, but no pilot house and an entire hull designed around ISO containers. Move over Hugo Gernsback (my inspiration for this one)
5. El Niño is bringing wacky weather to North America again. As a consequence, me thinks we will see a hurricane of Katrina proportions in 2016 make landfall in the South East US.
6. The FCC will move to drastically limit the allowable transmitter power for drones. Making powerful long distance or high altitude operation legal for only those trained and approved by a licensing scheme similar FAA pilot requirements. A test flight with a drone driver's ed inspector and of course.... a large fee and a neat plastic card to put in your wallet, possibly with a drone hologram on it. A clamp down on drones in 2016.
7. The Akatsuki probe team will announce a cool discovery about Venus. Maybe we'll finally get an answer to: Why does Venus spin backwards? Don't we all want to know that?! What a feat this team has already pulled off in getting this probe into orbit! The dawn of a new science day for Venus.
8. I'm going to carry over the electric car range prediction again... I'm thinking we'll see a 350 mile range on an affordable plug-in electric. I call this the "EV tipping point..." and I think we'll see it in 2016. It will be the start of a huge electric hybrid proliferation in many automobile models that will push fuel economy numbers through the roof. AND - it's about time, if I do say so.
9. Pet glasses. Want to see what your dog, cat or horse sees? Just buy a pair of these spectral filtered glasses at your nearest pet store and you can view the world as your favorite pet sees it. I think this would be big on the Home Shopping Network...There must be an app for this already...
10. Dieselgate will expand to other manufacturers as the emissions regulators start to look for defeat algorithms in engine controls behavior. I think we'll see that the diesel debacle and the as yet undiscovered software tricks out there for spark ignited and diesels will end up having a net positive influence on the advance of e-vehicles and the pull ahead launch of transformative technology. Glass is always half full!
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
That's it for the last post of 2015. I wish you all good health, happiness and prosperity in the year ahead!
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| See you next year! |
All My Love NLO, JRO, and SEO All My Love
