As is tradition, before recounting how bad I am at predicting future events, here is the scorecard from past years:
- 2009: 31% correct (5 of 16)
- 2010: 44% correct (7.5 of 17)
- 2011: 50% correct (7 of 14)
- 2012: 40% correct (6 of 15)
- 2013: 11% correct (1.5 of 14)
- 2014: 12% correct (1.5 out of 13)
Following two horrendous years, the odds favored a rebound… here are the results of the 2015 predictions:
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Hillary Clinton will announce she is running for President, and every Democrat of note including Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren will stay out of her way. Sarah Palin will go through the motions but will eventually announce that she isn’t running.
As predicted, Hillary has pitched a shutout thus far and looks to have pretty much wrapped up the nomination before any votes are cast. Palin, however, made no pretense of running, so this one was only half correct.
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After the initial release of the Apple Watch in April, version 2.0 will follow quickly in time for the Christmas shopping season.
Nope. I still don’t understand the point of having a watch that talks to your phone to… what? Save the two seconds it takes to get your phone out of your pocket? Until they add some useful health features I don’t think it’s going to be a meaningful product in their lineup. It would be neat to visit the alternate universe where Steve Jobs is still alive to see if he would have even bothered to release this thing in its current state.
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Star Wars: The Force Awakens will open with the largest weekend box office in history.
This movie has broken box office records by large margins and is going to be monstrously huge. In twelve days it has already made $600 million and will easily become the biggest movie of all time. That fact means that I’ve got 1.5 out of 3 predictions correct, and will thus at least equal the abysmal performances of 2013 and 2014 – hooray!
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SpaceX will launch their Falcon Heavy rocket, have a successful test of their launch abort system (necessary before they can fly humans to space), and they will not only successfully land first stages, but they will have announced plans to re-use one of them on a future test flight.
An explosion in June set the company back, but they still landed a rocket last week because SO AWESOME SPACESHIPS!!!!.
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The Supreme Court will refrain from disallowing subsidies to individuals living in states that do not run their own health care marketplaces in King v. Burwell, and will affirm the federal right to marry for gay couples in a consolidated case.
Correct in both cases. I don’t usually agree with him ideologically, but so far I think John Roberts has been a surprisingly good Chief Justice.
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Facebook is going to announce a significant new service that takes advantage of the massive user profile data sets that they have for their users.
Nope. Their big announcement this year was a “Haha” button, and somehow the stock is still up almost 50%.
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I think the Cavs (currently 26-20 and #5 in the East) will make the NBA Finals, but won’t win.
They got to the Finals and played six awesome games. Being a fan of Cleveland sports is a tragic comedy played out over decades, so this weird injection of success and excitement was pretty awesome.
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The new Republican Congress won’t do anything extreme like shut down the government over the budget or play chicken with the debt limit, but they also won’t pass any significant legislation such as changes to Obamacare, immigration reform, or tax reform.
I’m on a surprising roll – 4.5 out of 8. Congress opted for no shutdowns and no debt limit showdowns, and also passed no major legislation. That said, while they did briefly descend into chaos searching for a Speaker, they also shockingly fixed a difficult Medicare issue that has lingered since 1997, passed the first long-term highway bill since 2009, and overhauled the No Child Left Behind law. Overall, the performance was far worse than this country is capable of, but still better than expected when the year began.
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The St. Louis Rams will announce plans to return to Los Angeles.
No announcement has yet been made, but it appears likely. If the Rams do move, the new stadium will be really, really impressive.
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Tesla will announce a battery pack upgrade for the Model-S.
They came out with a pack for the Model-S that was a tiny bit larger, and announced a more significant 40% larger pack for the Roadster. Half credit on this one, since I expected a more substantial upgrade.
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The value of the Euro will rebound to at least $1.20 by the end of the year as exports pick up.
The value has continued to fall and is now $1.09, and with the United Kingdom threatening to vote on leaving the EU the outlook for a unified European economy continues to worsen. My financial predictions this year were… not good.
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The Browns will make at least three trades in the draft, netting at least one extra pick for next year.
They traded back in the second round, traded up in the third round, traded back in the fourth round, but amassed no extra picks for 2016. No prediction credit awarded.
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Apple is going to announce a television.
This is like the fifth time I’ve been wrong on this prediction. Steve Jobs would have gotten a TV out by now.
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Gas prices, currently at a national average of $2.04, will climb back over $3.00 by year’s end as supply is reduced and usage increases. I’ll peg the prediction range at $3.10 – $3.30.
It’s $3.03 in Los Angeles, but $2.002 nationally. The Saudis are apparently serious about keeping prices low to eliminate competition.
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The Washington Post is going to make some bold moves in 2015 that will show how traditional print media can thrive in the digital world.
Zuckerberg and Bezos both let me down this year, but if I had to choose between innovation in social media and print media, or innovation in ROCKETS THAT FLY TO SPACE AND THEN LAND BECAUSE OF AWESOME, I’ll choose spaceships every time.
There it is: 5 out of 15 (33%), making this the fourth best year out of the seven years that this game has been played. For once I actually would have beaten a blind monkey throwing darts, but the upcoming predictions for 2016 are almost certain to fare worse, so the monkey may have his revenge soon enough.