8 July 2013

 Birthdays
Billy Crudup b. 1968 (Watchmen)
Kevin Bacon b. 1958 (X-Men: First Class)
Keith Carradine b. 1949 (Dollhouse, Star Trek: Enterprise)
Jeffrey Tambor b. 1944 (Hellboy)

Four good actors are celebrating birthdays today, all with long successful careers that have very few roles in genre films or TV.

Many happy returns to them all.

Movies released

Fantastic Four released 8 July 2005

I was a big fan of FF when I was a kid, but the movies have been a huge disappointment.

Predictor: British Royal Society of Medicine (BRSM) in OMNI Future Almanac, published 1982

Prediction (reality): These medical advances will be available by 1990.

New generations of antibacterials perfected (Um, fellas? The process of evolution would like to have a word with you on the definition of "perfected".)

Dental caries conquered (not yet)

Male contraceptives developed (What's wrong with the stuff the womenfolk use? Unless it's Viagra, the menfolk are wary of drugs messing with the basic operation of the equipment.)

Asthma controlled (Inhalers have been around since 1955, the drugs have improved but the treatment is just about the same as before)

Bacterial and viral illnesses fall to new drugs (True enough, but some mutate into antibiotic resistant strains)

Anxiety and tension control achieved (There have been treatments since benzodiazepine was invented in 1955, but some people still have very severe panic attacks.)

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This is one of the great things about the OMNI Future Almanac. I can open it up, flip a few pages and find a gold mine of predictions with dates. There are twenty four predictions from the BRSM that would be achieved before the end of the 20th Century, so I'm going to split them into four sections and dole them out over the next few weeks.

Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!


Larry Niven will make a prediction about space exploration and it will be completely wrong.





Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!