Chief Prognosticator

I first heard of Bede in a Carl Sagan Book. He was writing about how this Benedictine monk had recorded 700 years of English history from the time of Christ to his day. Some call him “The father of English history”. I just fin it very interesting to learn about ancient historians and to see how the world is documented through their works.

Then, the other day, I heard about the a pile of trash, ancient trash, was unearthed in Oxyrhynchus, Egypt in 1896. What was amazing about it was the trash was from 1000-2000 years ago! What would be the most interesting thing about an ancient trash heap? The paper! With over 500,000 scraps of paper and only 5,000 cataloged, this find has already provided new writings of Jesus (!), ancient “romance novels), and knowledge that the “mark of the beast” was once 616 (not 666). Who knows what other amazing ancient knowledge will be uncovered.

Web 2.0, Schweb 2.0… blah, blah, blah. Sure user generated content has dominated the current Internet, but there is something else I noticed and it involves online video. Wait, before you start thinking about YouTube, stop! Again, I’m not talking about user-generated content. No, I’m talking about the 180 degree turn in how businesses have embraced giving away their content online. From Saturday Night Live’s digital shorts to ESPN’s online video selection, media companies are giving away their wares for free on the Internet. Even CNN.com is offering free videos of their news stories. I can remember about 6 months ago, CNN.com tried to sell videos via subscription. Now they’ve totally redesigned their site to feature free video content. Amazing. Why are they doing this:

1. Capture more eyes
2. Show more Ads

It’s a Google world. Enjoy:

Check out the coastline of Norway in winter and you will see a great example of a fractal in nature:
Fractals are actually very common when it comes to natural coastlines. This leads to a very real problem — How long is a coast line? There are many ways to approximate them with varying degrees of accuracy, but there is no way to get an absolute answer. It has been suggested that the damping behavior of coasts to waves are the cause for the rise of fractal coastlines.

Xenoarchaeology is the yet to be realized scientific discipline of archeology for ancient alien races. Since we have yet to discover an alien races, extinct or living, this discipline remains only part of science fiction literature. But what if we land on Mars and uncover something? Well you will be proud to know what Xenoarchaeology is.

Sure Halo is a cool computer game, but could a real Halo be constructed around our planet? For those of you who don’t know, a Halo is a megastructure which forms around a planet or in space in a giant ring. Here’s a screenshot from the video game:

So could it really happen? Well these sort of structures have already been hypothesized as Dyson Rings or even Dyson Spheres. Centrifugal force would produce artificial gravity on the surface of the ring.

Here’s a prediction I made on the original Chief Prognosticator Blog many months ago — OJ Book - Hide and Seek. I predicted the OJ Simpson book “If I Did It” would be published eventually. Well this prediction has sort of come true on two parts. First, the book is now leaked on the Internet. If you know where to look, you will certainly find it. The book has been scanned and made into a PDF file.

Secondly, it was ruled in court that the Goldman and Brown families now have the rights to the publishing. Ron Goldman’s father has said he might publish it under a new title, Confessions of a Murder, but it is considered only to be sarcastic.

Is the future filled with “One Person Cars”? I don’t think so but they may become somewhat popular. In Europe the Smart Car by Daimler Benz is a two seater and there is the single seater Tango being build in limited (very limited) numbers. The Tango, pictured, is built in annual batches of 100 by Commuter Cars of Spokane, Washington. But don’t think small means cheap — the Smart Car costs about as much as a compact and the first Tangos (the T600) cost over $100,000 (to offset the high custom manufacturing costs)!

[Image from Wikipedia / Commuter Cars]