Predictions For 2014

Anyone care to stick their neck out?

• After a rocky start and some further unforeseen setbacks, the Affordable Care Act will begin to impress even its critics, and will be seen as a major policy success for Obama by year end.
  
• Google will introduce Google Glasses mid-year. They will be an expensive novelty with little practical use.
  
• Tea Party candidates will generally have their asses handed to them in the November elections. However the beneficiaries will not be Democrats, but moderate Republicans.
  
• JK Rowling will die unexpectedly.
  
• The Chinese moon probe will die unexpectedly.
  
• Major wild fires in Northern California and Australia, floods in Germany and earthquakes in Tunesia
  
• DNA sequencing of cancer tumors will make targeted stem cell gene therapy highly successful for certain rare cancers. The price will remain astronomical.
  
• The NRA will have a major funding scandal, which leads to a federal indictment.
  
• SCOTUS will continue to drift rightward, with Ginsburg replaced by a moderate conservative judge from Montana
  
• A challenge to Roe v. Wade will come before the Court but they'll kick it back to the 9th Circuit for clarification

John Kerry will be replaced as Secretary of State by a nine-pound Canadian Hairless cat.

Interesting. A news report yesterday repeated the few limited tidbits Asimov got right, but didn't mention the vast majority he got horribly wrong. Of course fifty years ahead is freaking HARD to predict. Technology tends to be exponential, and extrapolating that far misses most trends completely.