Mmmm, what a nice morning. My, I can’t remember the last time I woke up on New Years’ in such good shape.
Wait, what did you say today was?
Oh, well. It’s never too late to play the annual prediction game, especially when you can crib from all the ones everybody else in the world has made. Here’s how the game will work: I’ll make a prediction, then name a category in which you (dear commenter) will make another prediction. Then you’ll name a category for the next person.
Could go on all year, really.
So: prediction one (category: media): ratings for all the broadcast networks (ABC/Fox/etc.) will nose-dive this year and never recover.
Your turn. Category: international relations.
-posted by Mike
Geek Buffet 
Prediction two (category: international relations): The Western press will pick up on the increasingly terrible situation in Somalia and start to make a big deal out of it a la Kristof and Darfur. Like Darfur, nothing (or close enough) will be done.
Next category: US elections. It doesn’t have to be nominations, or who’s going to win the whopper, but you’ve got to predict something.
Dammit, I should obviously leave this category for somebody else, but I’ve got a good one. Prediction three: this will be the year the political telephone poll falls apart.
My rationale is both geeky and, I think, interesting: Barack Obama is going to win the Democratic nomination, and John McCain may well win the Republican one (McCain, but not Obama, is favored on Intrade at this writing). What’s the most striking thing about tonight’s Iowa results? Age. The Obama sensation is built entirely on the backs of the young. He beat Clinton by 46 points among caucusgoers under 30; Clinton beat Obama by 27 points among over-65s; he won the caucus with only 18 percent of old folks’ votes.
McCain was just the opposite; the older you were, the more you liked him. McCain won fully 21 percent of the senior citizen vote.
McCain will be campaigning to become the oldest president ever, Obama to become the fourth-youngest. If these two meet, the election will bring the biggest electoral age gap since polling began.
And as we all know, the only thing that’s harder to find than a 20-something who doesn’t like Obama is a 20-something who keeps a land line.
Okay, next category: health and nutrition.
Health and nutrition:
Recent developments in the ability to create stem cells from skin cells will be adapted to the research in generating new pancreas cells as a treatment for diabetics. Extensive human trials for all manner of stem cell applications will begin in 2008. By 2012, we should be growing quite a few organs from our own cells.
Since it appears Jeremiah isn’t going to suggest another category, let me suggest technology.
[…] Another poll for the new year, this one requiring less thought than Mike’s 2008 prediction derby, (though clearly you should all go add your thoughts there too.) For those of us who still find […]