[Vhfcn-l] Monday musings

[Gary Thewlis]

Get at least 8 hours of beauty sleep. Nine if you're ugly.

Betty White

 

I was so scared I caught up on my regretting.

>From writings of Robert A Heinlein

 

Modesty is my best quality.

Jack Benny

 

Money can't buy you happiness. It just helps you look for it in more places.

Milton Berle

 

You can't help getting older, but you don't have to get old.

George Burns

 

Marriage is the chief cause of divorce.

Groucho Marx

 

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24 Strange Predictions For the 21st Century

 

Everyone from chocolate-making companies to some of history's greatest minds
(think Ben Franklin and Nikola Tesla) weighed in on what they thought life
would be like in the 21st century. Check out what they got right and wrong
(mostly wrong!) below, in this piece adapted from an episode of The List
Show on YouTube. Some may yet become true or more nearly true.

 

1. WE WOULDN'T DRINK COFFEE

Inventor Nikola Tesla thought that, by the 21st century, people would no
longer be drinking coffee. In a 1935 article in Liberty magazine, Tesla
predicted it simply wouldn’t be cool to poison our systems with what he
considered to be harmful stimulants like caffeine and nicotine. He thought
alcohol, on the other hand, would withstand the test of time. Tesla called
it an “elixir of life.”

 

2. NEWS HEADLINES WOULDN'T FOCUS ON CRIME OR POLITICS

Tesla was way off about coffee. He also misjudged what we’d consider
headlining news in the 21st century, predicting that newspapers would,
quote, “give a mere ‘stick’ in the back pages to accounts of crime or
political controversies.” Tesla believed the front pages would mostly cover
scientific hypotheses.

 

3. MEAT WOULD BE LESS COMMON

In a 1952 issue of Galaxy Magazine, science fiction author Robert A.
Heinlein posited that fish and yeast would be our main sources of protein,
and that beef would be a luxury. Sci-fi writer Isaac Asimov took it even
further. In 1964, he imagined that the 2014 World’s Fair would feature an
Algae Bar with “mock-turkey” and “pseudosteak,” saying, quote, “It won’t be
bad at all (if you can dig up those premium prices).” So, it seems the
Impossible Burger wasn’t exactly impossible to predict (though it does not
contain algae).

 

4. FRUITS AND VEGGIES WOULD BE HUGE

Others thought our food’s content would be more or less the same, but that
its scale would change dramatically. In 1900, John Elfreth Watkins, Jr.
wrote [PDF] in The Ladies’ Home Journal that we’d sink our teeth into
strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries “as large as apples,” and peas
and beans would be as big as beets. And that was nothing compared to what
George Serviss dreamed up. In a 1956 article from the Independent
Press-Telegram’s magazine Southland, Serviss imagined a farm from the year
2000 where hydrogen bombs caused the soil to produce 3-foot-long carrots,
4-foot-wide turnips, and basketball-sized tomatoes.

 

5. SOME LETTERS IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE WOULD BE ELIMINATED

Watkins, Jr. also believed that we’d completely get rid of the letters C, X,
and Q. Instead, spelling would be based on sound alone, so those three
letters would presumably be replaced by S’s and K’s. As bizarre as this may
seem, Benjamin Franklin and Noah Webster had advocated for spelling reform
in the 18th and 19th centuries. And just six years after Watkins Jr.
published his 21st-century predictions, steel magnate Andrew Carnegie
created the Simplified Spelling Board to revamp the English language.
Despite then-President Theodore Roosevelt’s best efforts, English spelling
remains largely un-simplified today.

 

6. WE'D BE ABLE TO MAKE IT RAIN ...

On January 6, 1910, Iowa’s Cedar Rapids Evening Gazette published an article
that predicted people would be able to make it rain within the next
century—which we actually can kind of do. Through a process called cloud
seeding, silver iodide particles are injected into clouds, and water
collects around them to form precipitation. Its effectiveness is debated,
however, and it’s still a far cry from where futurists thought we’d be by
the 21st century.

 

7. ... AND ELIMINATE HURRICANES

In a 1950 article from Popular Mechanics, Valdemar Kaempffert imagined that
hurricanes would be a nonissue by the year 2000. Upon spotting one over the
ocean, Kaempffert thought we’d ignite a large oil fire across the water,
drawing air from the surrounding region and putting an end to the hurricane

 somehow. He believed we’d be able to divert storms, putting an end to
flight delays. Oh Waldemar, would that it were so simple.

 

8. WE'D BUILD MACHINES TO GENERATE WEATHER

Other fantasies of controlling the weather were even more vague and less
scientifically sound. In 1900, a German chocolate company called Theodore
Hildebrand unt zoon released a series of illustrated cards with its best
21st-century predictions. One of them depicted a “good weather machine”
simply blowing a storm back over the ocean. That same year, The Boston Globe
suggested that we’d be able to generate a nice easterly wind whenever it got
too hot outside.

 

9. PEOPLE WOULD LIVE UNDERGROUND ... AND UNDERWATER

Asimov didn’t think we’d be able to conquer the elements, but he did think
we’d do a better job of avoiding them. He envisioned vast underground cities
where advanced light technology could mimic outdoor ambiences, and the
earth’s surface would be used for agriculture, grazing grounds, and parks.
He was a bit off the mark, but an underground park dubbed “the lowline” is
supposedly set to debut in New York at some point. Asimov thought we could
be well on our way to living underwater by the early 2000s, too, which he
felt would especially appeal to those who enjoy water sports.

 

10. WE'D RIDE ON FISH FOR SPORT

Predictions about 21st-century water sports went far beyond the traditional
sailing, surfing, and swimming you’re probably picturing. Between 1899 and
1910, French artist Jean-Marc Côté and his contemporaries produced almost
100 highly fanciful illustrations of the year 2000. On one, deep-sea divers
ride giant seahorses. Another depicts a whale pulling a bus full of people
through the sea. Yet another shows a crowd of onlookers cheering as jockeys
race by on the backs of enormous fish. Côté and his fellow artists might be
disappointed if they knew we weren’t yet spending all our free time
underwater, but they’d probably give Aquaman a five-star review.

 

11. WE'D TRAVEL IN UNUSUAL FLYING MACHINES

During the early 20th century, many people predicted a future that saw air
travel as the primary mode of transportation. This probably wasn’t a
coincidence, since the earliest planes were taking off around this time. The
Wright brothers’ famous first flight happened on December 17, 1903. About 10
years later, the first commercial flight carried a whopping one passenger
from St. Petersburg, Florida, to Tampa. The flight only covered around 20
miles, but that didn’t deter some people from dreaming big about
21st-century aviation.

 

Côté's early 20th-century French illustrations, for example, were big on air
travel. The images show just about every type of aircraft you can possibly
imagine. There’s one that looks like a hot air balloon basket attached to a
helicopter propeller, and another is just a ship attached to two
Zeppelin-like aircrafts. There’s also a number of individual flying machines
for police, firefighters, and regular citizens, which look like they have
actual animal wings attached to them.

 

12. WE'D ALL HAVE PERSONAL AIRPLANES

In 1930, Frederick Edwin Smith—Britain’s former Lord Chancellor and a close
personal friend of Winston Churchill—published a book called The World in
2030 A.D., in which he imagined that each person would own a small airplane
ideal for weekend trips. He wrote that, “Skiing parties in Greenland will be
made up in London clubs on Saturday mornings, and translated into action
before the same evening.”

 

13. WE'D WATER THE SAHARA DESERT

Personal planes were one of Smith’s more mundane predictions. He also
thought we might build a canal to funnel water from the Mediterranean Sea to
the Sahara Desert. Because portions of the desert are below sea level, this
would create what he called a “new Riviera” with “fertile charm” to rival
Florida and the beaches of southern France.

 

14. WE'D ONLY HAVE THREE SETS OF CLOTHING ...

By 2030, Smith hoped that men would have revolted against what he considered
farcical, excessively complicated, and unhygienic clothing. Instead, they’d
have only three simple outfits: one for work, one for recreation, and a
third for formal occasions.

 

15. ... OR WE'D MOSTLY WALK AROUND NAKED

Heinlein thought clothing would be on the outs altogether. Covering up would
be reserved for strangers and conservative old relatives, and psychiatrists
would actually recommend casual nakedness around the house.

 

16. THERE WOULD BE NO MORE STATE LINES

Heinlein also predicted that by the 1990s, the United States would have
passed a constitutional amendment that completely abolished state lines.

 

17. MOST OF THE EASTERN SEABOARD WOULD BE ONE MEGA-CITY

Asimov thought that Boston, Washington, D.C., and the area in between would
have merged into one giant city, with a population of more than 40 million
people. That hasn’t happened, but the population of the Boston to Washington
corridor did clock in around 50 million people in 2010.

 

18. MOVING SIDEWALKS WOULD BE EVERYWHERE

You’ve likely seen moving sidewalks in airports and train stations, but they
never became quite as popular as people of the past expected they would. The
Columbian Movable Sidewalk Company debuted the first one at the 1893 World’s
Fair in Chicago. It still holds the Guinness World Record for “longest
moving walkway ever.” Paris’s Exposition Universelle featured another
(shorter) moving walkway in 1900. Subsequent attempts to install them in
cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Boston all failed, due to maintenance
concerns, weather issues, and also, possibly, the simple fact they’re just
not very efficient. They have to move slowly so that people can hop on
safely—more slowly, in fact, than normal walking speed. And, as Jerry
Seinfeld once pointed out, people tend to just stand there like it’s a ride.

 

And if you think it’s frustrating to stand behind people on a moving
sidewalk at the airport, you might have had a tough time with those early
iterations. The version at Chicago’s World’s Fair had benches to sit on. The
one in Paris didn’t have seats built in to the moving part of the sidewalk,
but as Electrical World said in a 1900 feature, “visitors are beginning to
find this out and take their own stools and camp chairs.” So these moving
sidewalks acted kind of like a train, but slower, and without protection
from the elements.

 

19. WE'D LIVE TO BE REALLY, REALLY OLD

In a 1788 letter to Reverend John Lathrop, Benjamin Franklin shared his
theory that within a few centuries, we’d be living as long as the biblical
patriarchs [PDF] from the Book of Genesis. Noah, of ark fame, supposedly
lived to be 950 years old. And his grandfather, Methuselah, is said to have
died when he was 969.

 

20. THERE WOULD BE NURSING HOMES ON THE MOON

As for what a 900-year-old person might look or feel like, Franklin didn’t
speculate. Heinlein, on the other hand, imagined that nursing homes on the
moon could slow signs of aging. Because the moon has just 17 percent of the
gravity found on earth, Heinlein thought frail joints would ache less and
weak hearts wouldn’t have to work so hard. By Heinlein’s best estimates,
moon-dwellers would be able to reach a cool 120 years old.

 

21. HOUSES WOULD BE DUSTED AUTOMATICALLY

Speaking of not having to work so hard, Heinlein also dreamed up a much
easier way to clean houses. He called it a “whirlwind,” which would
automatically whisk dust right out of the house at regular intervals. If
you’re thinking that might bother you while you’re sleeping, eating, or
doing anything else, Heinlein had an answer to that, too. The machine would
only operate when it didn’t detect any masses radiating heat at body
temperature.

 

22. EVERYTHING IN HOMES WOULD BE WATERPROOF

Kaempffert thought we’d be able to clean our houses simply by turning the
hose on. He predicted that everything from the furniture to the drapes would
be manufactured from synthetic fabric or waterproof plastic. After rinsing
everything down the water would disappear through a drain, and then a blast
of hot air would dry it all off, kind of like a car-wash.

 

23. WE'D CREATE A MAN-MADE STAR

An Associated Press article from 1950 made the bold claim that we’d have our
first man-made star in space by the year 2000. Its surface would reflect
sunlight, and it would orbit the Earth from 400 to 500 miles away. To put
that in perspective, the moon maintains an average distance from the Earth
of almost 240,000 miles. But the article also describes the star as a
spaceship, so maybe the writer just didn’t understand what a star actually
is. In that case, their predictions weren’t quite so outlandish—the
International Space Station orbits Earth from around 248 miles away.

 

24. THERE WOULD BE 4-D MOVIE THEATERS

That article also anticipated “four-dimensional,” dome-shaped movie theaters
with the action unfolding on screens all around you. If a character stepped
into the street on the screen in front of you, you’d have to look behind you
to see if a car was coming. Virtual reality experiences continue to move in
the direction of this type of 360-degree immersion, but the 3D glasses we
use in theaters today don’t really have the same effect.

 

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What famous statesman sold 18 canvases to Hallmark cards for reproduction on
greeting cards?

A: Winston Churchill, in 1950. He was paid an undisclosed sum, which he
donated to Churchill college at Cambridge.

 

What was megacorporation IBM known as before its name was changed in 1924?

A: C-T-R, for computing-tabulating-Recording Company.

 

What did the George N. Pierce Co. Manufacture before it began producing the
Pierce-Arrow and other automobiles?

A: Bird cages.

 

In 1985 officials of a New York supermarket chain advertised for "part-time
career associate scanning professionals." What job position were they trying
to fill?

A: Checkout Clerk.

 

In 1985 a Denver hotel published an ad offering guest a "Free Hotel Room" in
large type. What was the catch in the fine print below?

A: "Parking $55.00 / night (Parking is mandatory)."

 

What is the maximum number of individual memberships--or seats--permitted on
the New York Stock Exchange?

A: 1,366. The number is set in the exchange's constitution.

 

"She kissed the hairbrush by mistake. She though it was her husband Jake."
What is the origin of this rhyme?

A: Burma Shave roadside jingle 1940.