Predicting has a spotty record in science fiction. I've had some failures. On the other hand I also predicted the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise of fundamentalist Islam... and I'm not happy to be right in all of those cases.

Nevertheless there is another threat on the horizon. I see this threat in environmentalism which is becoming a new dominant ideology if not a religion. Its main weapon is raising the alarm and predicting the human life endangering climate change based on man-made global warming.

Insofar as international law is observed it provides us with stability and order and with a means of predicting the behavior of those with whom we have reciprocal legal obligations.

Like many other touchstones of twenty-first-century pop culture 'The Sopranos' was hatched in the late Nineties predicting a future that never arrived. It was designed for a decade that would be just like the Nineties except more so in an America that enjoyed seeing itself as smarter and braver and freer than ever before.

I stopped predicting the future a long time ago.

I come back to the same thing: We've got the greatest pipeline in the company's history in the next 12 months and we've had the most amazing financial results possible over the last five years and we're predicting being back at double-digit revenue growth in fiscal year '06.