Peering at the Future...

This weekend's posting is mostly a potpourri of interesting miscellany. But we'll start and end with some items about... prophecy!

No, not reading tea leaves or goat entrails, but the kind that obsesses everyone from bureaucrats to corporate heads to school teachers to stock brokers to moms n' dads. Using those "lamps on our brows" -- our imaginative prefrontal lobes -- to poke a stick into the future we are running across, discovering opportunities and errors just in time.

I'll start with an item in the news.  Today -- very, very quietly -- the U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee finally issued its report on the tragic deaths of four American diplomats at the hands of terrorists in Benghazi, Libya.  The predictions about this report, touted for upwards of three years by Fox News and almost every Republican pundit and office-holder... (and many of you out there)... had been that the Obama Administration would be at-minimum revealed as incompetent and deceitful and more-likely criminally negligent cowards engaged in a Nixon-level illegal cover-up, possibly leading to impeachment.

Those of you who made -- or religiously repeated -- this forecast, do have the honesty to raise your hands?  

We'll have a look at the actual outcome from that committee -- chaired by my own republican representative Darrell Issa, lower down in this blog -- and see how you scored.

== Can we forecast the future? ==

Elsewhere, I explore this idea more formally, starting with the obsessively delusional methods of our astrologer ancestors and moving on to today's favorite delusions. For example, I have long called for a predictions registry that could track the simplest but most important metric of a public figure’s credibility… whether they turn out to be right a lot… or seldom! Go have a look at how I lay it out. There is probably no more-useful endeavor that some philanthropist might fund (cheap) than a service to score -- in a non-partisan way -- who in our civilization tends to be right a lot. 

It's a criterion we should use a lot more than the current standard for allocating power... those who are persuasive.

Is this a start?  Now Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight.com gives an A through F score for pollsters over the last decade... rating which ones have some credibility and which seem relentlessly biased or do poorly.

Can we use these scores to refine how to more accurately predict the future?

== Some people do want to achieve this? ==

In an article for Salon, Predicting the Future for the U.S. Government: Matthew Burrows -- author of the new book The Future Declassified: Megatrends That Will Undo the World Unless We Take Action (for which I provided a cover blurb) -- describes the work he has done in the past for National Intelligence Council’s Global Trends report. These reports explore changes that may take place in the near future -- over the next 15 to 20 years.  

I have read many of these reports and found them very useful cogently laying down a range of possible futures that policy-makers and implementers may have to face as we weave the minefield of the near future.

They are, of course, most useful when they offer choice points and potential branchings that might still be under human control

== College and Success: The miscellany begins! ==

My Ice Bucket ALS challenge video is up!  It's all YOUR fault!!!  (Those of you who ponied up for a good cause.  Clearly I suffered terribly, at the hands of my new-freshman son, who delivered the icy deluge! The important thing is -- not to view this as a prank -- but as an opportunity to give to worthy causes -- exercise your power of Proxy Activism.

Speaking about freshmen, heading off to college. Want them top get the most out of these university years? Every autumn I pull out my ten minute video of “Advice for College Students” and offer it to you all to pass along to that bright young person you know.  There are several tricks for making the most of his or her time at university, but the best and coolest one I save for last.  Any student who does this one trick is guaranteed — yes, guaranteed — to have a far more positive and enriched four+ years.

Ahem, while we're speaking of colleges, there’s news about college rankings....can I be forgiven for preening a bit about my alma maters? Okay I lucked out.  My bachelor’s degree is from the 12th best university in the world (10th in the U.S.) — according to the CWUR system.  My doctorate is from the planet’s 20th best campus (15th U.S.)  Oh, they’re #5 and #6 in the world, in the category of “influence.”  Gotta work on that.  Caltech would rank even higher if it weren’t too small to have a heap of majors.  

UCSD is still quite young (established in the 1960s) -- by far the newest in the top 20 --and we just set up the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination, which ought to boost the campus a few more slots!  

Bragging? Well, in fact, I kind of stumbled into attending both places.  And stumbled a bit, while there! But the key point is that I came away having squeeeeeeezed them both, using the methods I recommend in that advice video above... methods that any college student can use, to double value that they get out of their years at university. 

Again, my advice to college students.

== On Aliens and Religon ==

An interesting question: Which religions would have the hardest time accepting aliens? io9 starts off the discussion…

…referring to book: Religions and Extraterrestrial Life: How Will We Deal With it? by David A. Weintraub.

Alas, in this Scientific American interview, Weintraub displays some worrisome shallowness.  For example when he says: “In Judaism it doesn’t matter—there’s very little in Hebrew scripture that relates to the question.” But this is false when it comes to Talmudic and rabbinical commentaries.  Likewise, when I get the book I hope I will find the catholic discussions of C.S. Lewis and James Blish and other eminent science fiction authors who dealt with the theological implications of alien life with extensive thoughtfulness.

I do intend to buy this tome, which overlaps two areas of special interest to me.

== Miscellaneous Items ==

Giant Manta Ray Tangled in Fishing Line appears to 'Ask for Help' from Divers.  Actually, I mulled on events like this one long ago, in STARTIDE RISING... in that I sense that animals have a powerful sense of hierarchy in Nature.  Dolphins will play with orcas, till they sense they are hungry. Creatures who come to humans for help know that the humans are both powerful and not in a hunting mode.... All of this comes into whether it would be right to "uplift" animals.

Miscellany?  You want miscellany? Okay then let's veer to... scan through the photographs: all the stuff soldiers carried in battle from the 11th century to today.

What was that? A guide to the military gear adopted by police departments since 9/11 and used in Ferguson.

The Moscow Times is reporting that Bulgarian pranksters are repainting Soviet-era monuments so that the Soviet army types depicted are recast as American Superheroes.
  

A stunning video shows just how much skill and hard work goes into some of the fantastic “photo-shopped” images we are seeing nowadays.  Anyone who says we aren’t in an era of truly high art is crazy.  There’s never been a “renaissance” like this one, and we should shout it!  

Sci fi - historical-ish humor?  How to explain the Internet to an 1835 London street urchin.  

The more someone smoked pot as a teenager, the more likely that person would struggle as a young adult.

How prosthetic limbs are becoming more bionic. Amazing TED talk by Hugh Herr, with a very moving final ending.  

Okay, now I am just proud to be human. 3D gun makes - and shoots(!) paper planes.

Okay… here’s yet another reason to be proud to be human. ‘ The Airgonay drone club, based in the French Alps, organized a race in the forest for lightweight drones that bob, weave, and generally fly at up to 40 miles per hour. These are remote controlled drones, not autonomous, so operators have on-board cameras to see where their devices are going and take snazzy in-race footage.’  Reminiscent of the best scene in “Return of the Jedi.”  The report is in French, but you'll understand what's happening within a minute.

== Back to Benghazi ==

Okay, so, how did you fellows do?  You who predicted impeachment, prison terms and roiling scandals, when the GOP-run U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee finally issued its report on the tragic deaths of four American diplomats at the hands of terrorists in Benghazi, Libya.  How did you score?

Ah, let's see. "An investigation by the Republican-led House Intelligence Committee has concluded that the CIA and U.S. military responded appropriately to the attacks on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012, dismissing allegations that the Obama administration blocked rescue attempts during the assault or sought to mislead the public afterward."

Further: "After a two-year probe that involved the review of thousands of pages of classified documents, the panel determined that the attack could not be blamed on an intelligence failure, and that CIA security operatives “ably and bravely assisted” State Department officials who were overwhelmed at a nearby but separate diplomatic compound."

And: "The committee also found “no evidence that there was either a stand down order or a denial of available air support,” rejecting claims that have fed persistent conspiracy theories that the U.S. military was prevented from rescuing U.S. personnel from a night-time assault that killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans."

Earlier this year, the United States captured one of the militants accused of orchestrating the attacks in a raid in Libya. Ahmed Abu Khatalla now faces trial in the United States.

So... how did you score?  Note that this was issued by the most partisan U.S. House in 50 years, under a republican leadership that routinely and regularly threatens the president with impeachment for everything under the sun. Indeed, this house -- the laziest in 200 years -- held almost half of its total hours of hearings on just this one "heinous" matter. (They never showed the slightest interest in investigations the eleven "benghazis" that occurred under George W Bush, see accompanying image.)

No, there is only one "conspiracy" here. Delaying this stupendously exonerating report till after the election. Fox News covered this report in less than 30 seconds. Oh and Darrell Issa, chairman of the committee? After two years of grandstanding and tirades promising to "hold the criminals and traitors accountable?"

Mr. Issa's office ignored calls requesting a statement. He has been avoiding the press.  It seems... for once... he has nothing to say.