If you have a prediction that you don't have time to post personally, you can also mail it to the site for posting (use contact link at end of the About TFF tab).

The Internet has given a voice to a lot of people. I've noticed that there are a lot of errors in the way people are expressing themselves.

I make some doozies myself, so I'm not criticizing, but some of these just have to stop!

“PIER PRESSURE.” That ought to float your boat.

“CATARAK.” Bad eyes lead to bad spelling.

“REST IN PIECE.” That's restful. Saw this on a blog, and the very next reply started cursing the guy out.

“THAT DOESN'T JIVE WITH THE FACTS.” And it probably doesn´t shuck either!

“LOW AND BEHOLD.” Is that what you see when you bend down and look up?

Soon you'll hear “THE PITTER-PATTER OF LITTLE FEED.” Say what???

“DUEL CITIZENSHIP.” When you really want to fight for it.

“BOLD-FACED LIE.” I always heard this as "bald-faced lie," but I see that there has been some lobbying to make "bold-faced lie" acceptable too. I have to wonder if that isn´t what happens when you have someone very influential who is too proud to admit a mistake.

“MUTE POINT.” If it was “mute” it wouldn´t be a point at all.

“I'M SELF TAUT.” So lighten up.

“TOWING THE LINE.” It's “toeing the line,” like, you know, where your foot would be when waiting to run a race.

Some people have trouble with metaphor, like *sigh,* thinking Chicken of the Sea tuna is some kind of underwater chicken, I guess wearing a snorkel. What can you do?

EXPONENTIAL CHANGE. Everything is exponential. Somehow this word has escaped math class and gotten out into the public, when people really need to say something like “really big” or “pretty darn big” or “Golly!”

A lot of times people mean linear when they say exponential. A linear rate of change can be pretty big too, depends on the magnitude or slope of the change.

“RIGHT TO BARE ARMS” ??? No one has tried to ban short-sleeves, yet.

NO ONE. It's not noone, none, no-one, but “no one”, with a space between NO and ONE. I think that one is confusing because of the word, “someone.”

PRIZES. Haven't seen this yet, but I feel it looming: Consolation Prize as Constellation Prize, or maybe, Constipation Prize.

HOMONYMS. Lead (the metal), led, lead (pronounced 'leed'). Read (sounding like 'red'), red, read (sounding like 'reed'). Almost everyone seems to confuse these at one point or another, with good reason. What can you do?

ITS AND IT´S. “It's” is a conjunction of “it is.” “Its” is the possessive form of it. It's hard to explain, but soon you'll see its sense.

That ends today´s public service announcement and me starting to sound like my elementary school English teacher.

I included a remark in the previous blog, that Evolution wasn´t a theory anymore since it had been disproven. This was partly in reaction to the evolution crowd that is now going around claiming that evolution is both theory and fact, whatever that means.

My concern is that these people with influence, who are supposed to understand science, have no clue. Fortunately, they prove it themselves through their actions.

I really hit the motherlode while researching this article when I found a researcher who is doing something called the "E. Coli Long Term Evolution Experiment."

This is a good example of begging the question. It starts off with "Evolution" in the title, thereby giving the tacit assumption that evolution is correct.

When you dig a little deeper, there is a lot of hysteria that the experiment has proven that Evolution is a fact. Not just natural selection, but all of the aspects of the theory.

They (researchers and fans), make this claim based on the finding of E. Coli, within samples, that can absorb the "citrate" molecule. (The samples are just basically E. Coli in containers that are allowed to reproduce over endless generations - it looks like they´re up over 20,000 now.) The E. Coli they started with could not absorb the molecule.

So, the researchers are claiming that absorbing the citrate molecule is a big new thing, disregarding their own admission that E. Coli that can ingest the citrate molecule already exist, "in the wild," if you will.

There is a blog discussing this result and it´s all aflame over this "proof," but here´s my objection: Evolution is claimed to be the result of many, many small random changes to an organism over many, many generations. If we assume that the citrate ingesters in the experiment we are discussing are not the result of contamination from outside sources (which is even admitted by the researchers to be a possibility), doesn´t this DISPROVE evolution? If the SAME THING keeps "evolving," how can it possibly be RANDOM?

I don´t think the origin of life has been explored fully enough for anyone to go presenting "theories" of any kind, we´re still at the "ideas" stage. Why put all your eggs in one basket with this Evolution idea? If you spend a little time doing research, you will find that there are many ideas and concepts regarding the origin of life.

I don´t want to waste much more time on this, since the latest "scientific" con has just been making news, where "Researchers" have been caught tampering with climate data to support their faltering "Climate Change" nee "Global Warming" scam.

Bottom line is, it looks like a lot of degreed scientists don´t represent science in any way, and a lot of tax money is going to fund a lot of useless endeavors. Nuff said.

I introduced the idea of abstraction in the previous blog. Some people garner things through osmosis, almost, but most people don't know abstraction unless it's taught. Sometimes it's the slow road, like me figuring out dramas. Certain things seem to be absorbed, but a lot of that is unfortunate propaganda from bad news sources, advertisement, ill-informed loudmouths, and so on. Hence if you try to discuss some important topic with someone, you invariably get a glib answer with little substance, but that seems to be emotionally satisfying to the speaker.

In the public media, when something turns out to be wrong, there is rarely, if ever, a retraction or correction. What a world: we have to be wary of what we DON'T know, and what we DO know.

Which brings up the topic of Evolution. That was a theory, and a pretty good one, that said that there is a common ancestor to all life and that life slowly changes or evolves to suit the environment with better adapted creatures surviving to reproduce and pass on their adaptations to their offspring. I seem to recall that Darwin made observations tending to support the theory at Galapagos. Australia also has interesting species that seem to support the theory.

Looking a little deeper, we see that Evolution is actually observation and theory combined. Unique adaptations – or site specific characteristics - were observed in places like Galapagos and Australia. And of course we can see for ourselves, every day, that traits are inherited. Redheaded father with a redheaded son, for example.

Darwin sort of extended the observation of inherited traits out to try to answer the nagging question of what the origin of life is. So, a theory was proposed that adaptive changes can be gigantic over time, and that adaptions are passed forward through inheritance, leading to huge advancement in the capabilities of species. For instance, one might state that the capacity of reasoning appears to enhance survival, so evolution led to a reasoning creature, man.

An important part of the theory is that all life has a common ancestor. Now whenever you have a theory, there have to be elements that make it a theory. And these elements have to be provable or disprovable, otherwise it's not a theory at all. For example, you can't have a theory about whether ghosts exist, since the ghosts can take on any attributes you like so you can't ever prove or disprove their existence. Science has helped society make great strides by applying the unspoken requirement that if you have something that is unprovable, you ignore it and don't waste time investigating or making theories about it. (Predictions, as gathered here at Foreseeable Future, attempt to follow some rigor, to give them a scientific aspect.)

Now it may surprise you that Evolution is not a theory anymore. It has been disproven. Since the element of the theory was that there was a common ancestor, it means that there must also be a fossil record of gradual changes within and between species. Unfortunately, none have been found. A lot of old fossils from millions of years ago have been found that look pretty much like today's. Species like dinosaurs have gone extinct, but not led to any new species, it seems. There's still some attempt to make connections though, but not much evidence. I recall an outlandish statement that “birds came from dinosaurs.”

To deal with the lack of a fossil record, they tried to 'sneak one by.' Now evolution has changed to 'punctuated equilibrium,' where vast species changes occur at unpredictable times, resulting in stuff like a T-Rex laying an egg and out pops a Tweety Bird.

This is literally a scientific shell game, where you can never make any progress. If there had been some past observation of wild vast changes in species occurring, then there would be some backing for this new tack, but you cannot make a theory based on a claim of something that no one has ever seen. Punctuated equilibrium is not even, therefore, a theory.

Probably, some will say that they themselves haven't abandoned Evolution and are still looking for the missing links. That's fine, but calls into question how long are you going to beat a dead horse. Or make wholesale changes to the 'theory' and then try to pass it off as the same thing.

But you see what I mean. There is no honest investigating. Things that don't support pet 'theories' are swept under the rug. Wholesale changes are made in 'theories,' but never explained. And the worst part is the part that all this has turned science into non-science. In any theory, we should be hearing as much from the opposition as from the supporting side. A lot of science is so politicized that there is no opposing side, since there would be no financing for research in the opposing area. That is the crux of the matter, and gives us absolute identification of when some aspect of science is politicized: It is politicized when we don't hear equally from both sides of the scientific argument.

There is another issue. Both scientists and religions are guilty of exploiting the idea of evolution. The two groups have set up the two as some sort of thesis-antithesis. Yet there are obviously many other possibilities other than pure evolution.

This article became more and more lengthy as I got into it, and started to review some of the current claims about evolution. When I have the patience, I'll post my findings in a 'part three.'

I don´t know if you´ve ever thought about the different labels we use for describing the themes of movies. Most of them are pretty straightforward, but I've occasionally wondered about the term, "drama?"

I mean, Comedies are comical, Science Fiction shows have high technology, etc. But it took me a long time to figure out why they're called Dramas; that is, what was the defining characteristic of a drama.

Then one day it hit me, and it was, of course, obvious once I saw it. Dramas are where something Dramatic! happens. Like you're watching Lassie, and Lassie gets pursued by the bad guys and has to jump off a roof and sprain an ankle. (Do dogs have ankles? More like cankles, but never mind.) Lassie didn't have to go up the stairs, and could have run off down the street, but knew that jumping off the roof and spraining an ankle would be more dramatic.

I don't know if you've noticed this aspect of dramas, but in the poor ones (that is, not like Lassie), something stupid inevitably happens to bring the story to the brink of drama... and beyond. It's a fine line a writer has to navigate, to keep the story realistic but dramatic, and I suppose it's what separates the good writers from the hacks.

That point about dramas is an abstraction, summarizing a piece of knowledge. I want to know about categories so I don't hear about a great "Tragedy" playing at the movies, then, misunderstanding, and hoping for a good laugh, instead come out of the theater with great gouts of tears streaming down my cheeks since I neglected to bring a hankie. It may seem like kind of a lightweight sort of knowledge, but there is a parallel with "theories" in science.

"Science" really seems to be misunderstood, and that can only be through intent, since science itself is pretty simple and something everyone participates in every day - making hypothesis, testing things and whatnot.

You may have heard that today's "science" is just the poorly coordinated mishmash left after tribal consensus and censorship, and it's true: Science has been "politicized."

Science should be, at its core, logic, but scientists clearly want to set up a mystique around themselves. Nothing has changed in thousands of years. They actually want to practice Voodoo, not science.

Somehow, hornswoggling has been done so that when we in the public hear the term "theory," that somehow is framed as "knowlege." In a sense, this is not so much an error, as a correct interpretation of the way the word is used. We abstract from the behavior of the scientific community. That community acts as though "theory" means "knowledge," instead of "theoretical" and "unproven," and I'll go into the details of the nasty consequences of that in the next blog.

Welcome to the site!

There have been some comments that it´s tough to think of predictions. Probably it´s more that it is tough to verbalize them, since that isn´t so much a daily activity as acting on them.

If you can't think of any prediction of your own at the moment, there's a whole body of predictions out there just waiting to be posted, outside of members postings. I mean predictions related to the economy, politics, sports, science, medicine, and pretty much everything.

That's what the External Predictions section is for, and if anyone can think of a better name, please let me know! For those, just create a user with the same name as the website (for instance, example.com), then make a post while logged in as that user, and propose it as a prediction, using the same criteria for points and date as noted on the About page.

What I find interesting is that we should see patterns emerge on the Predictions Calendar as more and more predictions are added. So what's so great about that, you ask? It means that we should see areas of time that are significant in some way. Consider this: if there are numerous predictions for a certain date, even if they are all wrong, it indicates that something of significance is likely for that date.

Does this point to some kind of 'group awareness' or 'psychic abilities?' Don't know, but maybe it's a start towards figuring it out.