Yes I've been to that exact station

There Will Be Confetti and Speeches
Conductor: This is not the airport station. You will know it when you see it. I will make a big deal about it when we get there.

BART Station
San Francisco, California

Overheard by: Glad my iPod was off
via Overheard Everywhere, Nov 8, 2008

Times are bad

Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.
– Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BC - 43 BC)

Didn't know about Haiti

This is an interesting opinion. Why Haiti's Earthquake Is France's Problem

I almost feel guilty...

... forwarding this story around. But I can't resist. It is pretty amusing.

Weight Watchers clinic floor collapses under dieters

Curious?

Scores of readers are asking me when my predictions for 2010 will be coming. You'll just have to wait for a while.

I predict that I will not post them before January 1.

So was I right?

It is time for me to review the predictions from last year so we can have a good laugh. Maybe? Not sure. I wrote that last sentence before even looking to see what I predicted. Here goes:

- Either a new country will be created somewhere in the world in 2009, or a country will disappear.

As far as I know, this did not happen.

- The GDP of the US will be lower in 3Q2009 than it was in 4Q2008. It will be higher in 3Q2009 than it was in 2Q2009.

Obviously we all had the economy on our minds at the end of last year (still do). So let's look up the actual statistics here. I am going to use the best available numbers, since I know they get "updated" from time to time, probably when it's politically convenient.

I am using http://www.bea.gov/national/nipaweb/TableView.asp?SelectedTable=5&FirstYear=2008&LastYear=2009&Freq=Qtr for some nice raw data. These numbers are presumably in billions of US$.

3Q2009: 14,242.1
2Q2009: 14,151.2
4Q2008: 14,347.3

So it looks like I was right on that one.

- I am going to put up an additional new web site in 2009.

I'm going to call that a "no" -- there was really nothing significantly public that I did. Partly because of the next item.

- The Western Syndicate site will still be going same as ever at the end of 2009.

It turns out no. Postings here, as you may have noticed, are significantly down, but that is because I have offloaded a lot of stuff to the Twitter/Facebook combination, where I am actually posting more than I used to. Foresaw the rise of social media, possibly, but not my sudden increased use of it in 2009.

So I got, what, 1 out of 4. That seems pretty typical. Predicting the future is hard.

One I can agree with

If we're picking what we want the next terrorist act to be, here is a good suggestion.

Are you ready?

Do you want to talk about predictions from last year and predictions for next year?

The Queen what?

Queen faces anti-terror checks every time she leaves UK
(Daily Mail)

The Queen is to be forced to go through an identity check every time she flies into and out of Britain.
For the first time, Her Majesty will be compelled to give her full name, age, address, nationality, gender and place of birth to immigration officials, who will then check that she is not on a list of wanted terrorists.

I want to know what they do if they find her on the list.

Nebraska Nebraska

http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2009/12/09/426-mysterious-nebraska-shaped-field-in-nebraska/