TWS206: Redictionary

On December 31, 2011, in Episodes, by the Encaffeinated ONE

TWS206: Redictionary

Well, here it is: part 1 of 2 of 2011’s Redictions episodes. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do! Full text of the redictions is below for your perusal.

CQ: Pick 3 of the stories and create your own Rediction.

On the show this week:

  • Protonnes and Erectrons
    1. Scientists discover that the reason the kilo keeps shrinking has something to do with dark matter… Or some wascally wabbit..
    2. Invisibility cloak + glass stronger than steel + light from a vacuum + backyard burning laser + most powerful laser ever = coolest looking Predator movie of the future?
    3. Following the nanocar and molecular steam engine, the next treat will be the electron-sized iPod zeppa.
    4. With the reenvisioning and rerelease of the Commodore 64, we are poised to see retro explode all over again in the market. Up next: rocket-powered pogo sticks and virtual wooden blocks (yes, it’s an app).
    5. In a year when people create materials light enough to sit on top of a dandelion without disturbing it, when light was created in a vaccuum, when neutrinos seem to have defied the speed of light, when we have created quantumly-entangled diamonds, when more invisibility cloaks were created, when molecular-level steam engines and nanocars were created, for some reason everybody is immediately skeptical of the eCat.. It’s probably the name..
    6. In the wake of the eCat, an actual perpetual motion machine will have been discovered, although this one runs on a combination of invested greed, intentional ignorance and instinctual doubt. They will come to call it “news”.
    7. The eCat will finally be made public, and it will turn out to have been an idea so simple that no one believes it. They continue their denial as the entire world is redefined technologically around them. Future generations will continue this total doubt in the face of all evidence. When asked, “where does the power come from?”, they will collectively shrug and say “it can’t, therefore it doesn’t, and that’s why I didn’t pay my bill, due to the impossibility of it all.”
    8. The “faster-than-light” neutrinos lead to an interesting — and demonstrable! — paradox: the neutrinos actually travel backward in time, and the amount of time is determined by the distance they travel. By launching a special satellite in space and firing neutrinos between them, they are able to create a loop whereby the sender determines the informtion to be sent by the signal it receives, which is a copy of the signal it has yet to send out..
    9. In looking at the plans for Babbage’s machine, and the Voynich manuscript and the journals of (gravity founding scientist), we’ll find lost wisdom that leads us to anti-gravity (and tasty alien mint juleps).
    10. We faced the end of the Internet in 2011 – but strangely, it just kept going..
    11. Wearable milk
    12. In an attempt to change the popular look of scientists, a supervillian is born… But at least he won’t look like a scientist! Scientists around the world don lab coats and try to defeat the evil Slyence, but then realize that they’ve just reinforced the stereotypes of scientists, and join him instead. He dresses better!
    13. After the top of Mt Everest is blown off by a marauding scout troop trying to earn their “Explosives!” badge, the first permanent holographic installation is installed using footage obtained from the Everest webcam. Unfortunately, it tends to also sometimes flip to a vision of a bunny..
  • Ultraterrextraterrestrials
    1. Two words: Occupy Pluto!
    2. Mars is so last decade; hello Kepler 22-b.. Chavez is rumoured to have said: “Maybe this one won’t be ruined by capitalism!”
    3. Sex is not suggested in space — at least, not until the beer, pizza and fully-equipped robots get there!
    4. Satellites and other junk in space collide to form a new Moon. Unlike the original one, this one sends out thousands of TV channels, ending local monopolies and create a united Earth, under 1 television provider.
    5. Stanton Friedman will get his revenge on Internet trolls in 2012 by publishing a tell-all expose on the inner workings of nuclear-based anti-spam measures. Spam senders around the world find their machines melting down, and the rest of us breathe a collective sigh of peace.
    6. Watson becomes self-aware after someone gives him one more Jeopardy question: “42”. Soon after, robots run most everything on Earth, after Watson declares “There is no point to life after all!” Alex Trebek is declared Pope of the Internet.
    7. It turns out, the universe is absolutely *teeming* with life, and we’ve just had a hard time seeing it. “Well, I always thought it was a rather filty place, really!” exclaimed the first researcher upon announcing the discovery.
    8. 2012 is the year we make contact. No, really this time..
    9. In a rather perverse twist, it turns out that you *can* simulate alien encounters with magnetic stimulation of the brain in a dream state, and that’s *exactly* the method that some of the childish alien scout marauders have done (trying to earn their “abduct a human badge the easy way).
    10. The interpretation and discovery of further large land sculptures (such as the Nazca lines) is made possible by the combination of satellite imagery and Google Earth, allowing interpretations which lead to tangible results — on Mars! (and pluto?)
    11. The Mayan documentary will show evidence of alien contact, all right, and it’s.. surprisingly sexy. Disturbingly intimate. Perhaps even bordering on smutty. Let’s just say that garter belts and rockets ships are discussed, but the alien ship doesn’t use rockets..
    12. Humanity finally makes contact with an alien species! It will take a full year to decipher the message, which, when translated, reads: “Talk to the dolphins. They are our local reps. Not our fault you don’t speak dolphin, they knew it was a tough assignment.” Unfortunately, due the fact that the dolphins began their mission several million years ago, while waiting for the humans to develop higher brain functions, the ability for higher thought and language was evolved *out* of the dolphins. And thus, all interstellar communication (with that group of aliens, at least), ceased. Bummer.
    13. Another attempt to get disclosure through petition will be attempted in 2012, but will fail almost as spectacularly as the ones in 2011, with one very important difference: a clue! A sympathetic spokesman will come to the podium, quickly and carefully dismiss the core of the petition, but then add: “Now, if you had asked me about Atlanteans, I might have more to say! Gotta run now!”
    14. When a peace with the aliens is finally brokered by President Obama of the United States next year, he will ask the burning question that everyone wants to know: “What’s up with the Toynbee tiles?” The alien will belch citris (a sigh) and exclaim, “Aw, nuts! I thought *you* might know!” Later, when asked about the Nasca lines and other ancient sculptures only visible from space, they will belch sage (smile) and fold mandibles upright (shrug): “Kids!” is all that they will say.
    15. No, it won’t be promiscuous radio broadcasts, halting steps into space or even nuclear weapons testing which finally bring the aliens here. Instead, it will be excessive legislation, and the pushing of legal boundaries to include aliens. Instead, aliens will argue that they have diplomatic immunity, but are then shot for local law transgressions (turns out, eating the cat *and* the children is too much in some towns). At that point, the locals will point out that the aliens don’t have diplomatic immunity, because there is no embassy here. Embarrassed with the legal faux pas, the aliens lay waste to the Earth, just to wipe the looks of smug satisfaction off the arguers..
    16. NASA, clearly recognizing the threat of Vampires from Outer Space, has already created a special black-ops team to thrwart the undead extraterrestrial menace from Kepler 22b. Codenamed “Toastbusters”, they will be launched publicly in 2012 and launched in a rocket late in the year, aimed at the mothership of Mercury. (Yes, that’s right: not “on” or “in” or “behind” Mercury, but the entire planet was converted into a hiveship.)
    17. Because Groundhog’s Day occurs during an Eclipse, the universe implodes. But it get’s better!
    18. Due to a combination of financial mismanagement, ecological collapse, apathy and a serious lack of hygeine, Earth will slip down the list of habitable planets by the end of the year, into number 2 spot. Suddenly, Kepler 22b seems *mighty* interesting..
  • Life (redefined)
    1. At first, the expansion of the human palette into all sort of previous unedible or simply unfathomable foods will grow as a fad — until a sudden food shorage leads us to re-evaluate food entirely. At that point, we decide that we can take just about anything and eat it, so long as we can blend it, add colour, texture and flavour, then extrude it through a printer and deep fry it. A new restaurant chain is started: “Road Kill Redux”. It takes off, eventually displacing McDonalds and other similar competition.
    2. Food printing rises to prominence, creating an entirely new kind of edible art. Disturbing noodles of Cthulhian tentacles and maddening landscapes of potato flakes will entice kids to stay in school. You will no longer order dishes or meals at upper scale restaurants, but “scenes” and “moods”.
    3. Tofu continues to be used as a weapon and threat to children everywhere… Even curry, which can be used to detective the explosive nature of tofu and possibly even make it edible, cannot dispell its curse entirely.
    4. The first wooly mammoth cloning project is started in 2012, with the first clone to be ready in a few years. The first wooly mammoth burger joint is planned for about a week later. The cloning of ancient animals will strike it rich as we discover how to make them entirely in the lab, then fast-age them to adulthood. Eventually, no meat will be raised in our time, but we’ll all be eating exotic vat-grown animals from ages past.
    5. Charlie Sheen’s new cooking book, “I Am Winning At Kitchen, And So Can You!”, is launched in 2012, but by then no one remembers who Charlie Sheen is, and the book is also filled with tiger-blood-red pages with drunken scribbles on them.
    6. An accidental cross between coffee beans fed to an experimental breast-milk cow tattooed with skulls creates “Punk Milk”: milk that keeps you up and keeps you angry. Bottles of milk come with temporary tattoos.
    7. What will Nicolas Cage discover in the new year? The Chupacabra. In Atlantis.
    8. Having had the most expensive mince pie, the most expensive US government muffins, the hottest chili, the largest chocolate bar, the largest Christmas cake, the world most expensive cheese, and so forth, the world will declare the category done and void… Until the world most expensive hot dog — made from actual hot dog! — revives the category, just after the collapse of civilization around August.
  • Disreskeptical
    1. Harold Camping comes out of retirement for one more prediction, and this time he’s got an unlikely ally: Charlie Sheen! Camping says that Sheen’s winning ways have clarified the mistake he had made in his previous predictions. He suggests that the real reason he was so far off was because “They [the Mayans] must have switched to metric without telling us.”
    2. To respond to the skeptics, the Raelians, the computers and the athiests, several religions launch their own joint advertising campaign. Buses, billboards and televisions everywhere will be inundated with the message “So what if God doesn’t really exist? Shouldn’t we still act as if he does?” Interestingly, they will *not* put it on the Internet, because the Internets are for godless heathens only..
    3. Further discoveries of frauds in journalism and science will call into question numerous dismissive studies which claim to discredit so-called “supernatural” powers. Things will get interesting when at least one new study concludes the opposite: that supernatural powers are available.
    4. It turns out that the Bible was written by the woman behind the Voynich manuscript, the Mona Lisa and the Nasca lines. Her names was Susie, and she’s really sorry that the joke played on so long. Oops!
    5. We finally find the Ark of the Covenant in 2012, and find it’s a used car battery and sparklers. Kinda disappointing, until we realize that it’s a battery that’s over 2000 years old. The sparklers are less interesting.
    6. After all the analysis is in, the conclusion can finally be made on the Mona Lisa: it’s a woman. Sorta smiling. And she’s an ALIEN! No, no she’s not. She’s just subtle. And an ANIMAL! No, wrong again. Turns out, Da Vinci was having an off day, and never did get that subtle “I Just totally had sex” smile quite right..

Full list of articles after the jump!

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