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The morning I met Elaine Rich, she was sitting at the kitchen table of her small town home in suburban Maryland trying to estimate refugee flows in Syria.It wasn't the only question she was considering; there were others:Will North Korea launch a new multistage missile before May 10, 2014?Will Russian armed forces enter Kharkiv, Ukraine, by May 10? Rich's answers to these questions would eventually be evaluated by the intelligence community, but she didn't feel much pressure because this wasn't her full-time gig."I'm just a pharmacist," she said. "Nobody cares about me, nobody knows my name, I don't have a...

Since the 1950s, geological reports on the hill that buckled during the weekend in Snohomish County have included pessimistic analyses and the occasional dire prediction. But no language seems more prescient than what appears in a 1999 report filed with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, warning of “the potential for a large catastrophic failure.”

Please post "Just for Fun" "Predictions" for this year.

In 2013, Bashar al-Assad was ousted from Syria, unemployment remained at 8 percent, and the Washington Redskins won the Super Bowl. That's obviously not what happened this year. But being wrong never stops a whole slew of psychics and pundits from making bold new predictions for the next year. For now, however, we're going to take a look at the predictions made at the end of last year and beginning of this year for what would happen in 2013. Some were on the mark, and others were way off. What People Got Right The National Rifle Association predicted in mid-January...

Predicting the weather -- especially a decade or more in advance -- is unbelievably challenging. What's the track record of those most worried about global warming? Decades ago, what did prominent scientists think the environment would be like in 2010? 1. Within a few years "children just aren't going to know what snow is." Snowfall will be "a very rare and exciting event." 2. "[By] 1995, the greenhouse effect would be desolating the heartlands of North America and Eurasia with horrific drought, causing crop failures and food riots…[By 1996] The Platte River of Nebraska would be dry, while a continent-wide...

Four Horsemen of Apocalypse, by Viktor Vasnetsov. Painted in 1887 As I said in my last article in the previous year, I live in two worlds.  I am an Evangelical convert to the Catholic Church through Anglicanism.  I am fully orthodox as a Catholic and fully submit to the teaching authority of the Catholic Church.  At the same time however, I was once an Evangelical Protestant, and I come from a family that his been Protestant for literally 500 years.  I cannot deny my roots or pretend they don't exist.  If I lived in a Catholic country, or in...

Each December I gaze into my crystal ball and predict what I believe will be the top 10 stories of the coming year. I almost never get these right but they’re fun to speculate about nevertheless. A year from now we’ll take a look back and see how well I did. You can see the predictions I made 12 months ago for 2013 here and here. 10. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1 will be the top grossing movie of the year. Other than the conclusion to The Hobbit, The Hunger Games is the most bankable brand coming out with...

<p>It's time to see how well I did with my predictions for 2013 and to offer a set of 2014 forecasts.</p> <p>I got 10 predictions for this year right. President Obama's job approval rating did drop—from 53% at year's start to 40% this week. There was a new administration scandal, the most significant being the IRS targeting of conservative groups. And ObamaCare's implementation was indeed "ragged and ugly" and "a continuing political advantage to Republicans" as forecast.</p>

Post your predictions for 2014. Anything from Sports, Oscars to the 2014 House/Senate elections, SCOTUS rulings, Texas governors race, to the Super Bowl, etc.

Despite a recent strongly worded clarification from Rome, confusion is continuing to be stirred up over the Catholic Church’s practice of refusing Communion to those who are divorced and remarried. A prominent curial cardinal, and favorite of Pope Francis, has defied the Vatican’s doctrinal office, saying that he expects a change. Cardinal Walter Kasper has said bluntly, and in direct opposition to the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), that the rules will shortly be changed to allow divorced and remarried Catholics to be admitted to Holy Communion.

The College Football Czar: 2013-14 Bowl Game Picks a sports publication from The Shinbone, by Daniel Clark Week fifteen in review: Once again, the BCS has succeeded in doing exactly what it was designed to do, by matching the two most qualified teams, Florida State and Auburn, in the national championship game. Fans nevertheless hate it, and can’t wait for it to be gone. Granted, there is an element of luck involved in being able to create an unassailably valid national title game. If not for Ohio State’s loss to Michigan State in the Big Ten championship, people would be...

The College Football Czar: Week 15 Week fourteen in review: Actually, the biggest news of the week has just broken earlier the same day that this installment of picks is being posted, when the attorney general of Florida announced that Heisman trophy favorite Jameis Winston of Florida State will not be charged with sexual assault. Hopefully, this means that the freshman phenom truly is innocent, but all we really know is that the prosecutors did not believe they had enough evidence to support the charges. Alabama’s three-peat chances faded into the Great White North, as Auburn dug into the CFL...

The College Football Czar: Week 14 Week thirteen in review: Before we get to last week’s events, you’ve probably already noticed that this week’s installment of picks is being released two days early. That’s so that they can be available to College Football Czar’s readers at work, on the last day before Thanksgiving weekend. This, of course, leaves the Czar a condensed time frame in which to make a larger-than-usual number of picks, so please excuse their relative brevity and semi-literacy. The number of undefeated national contenders has been whittled to three, with Oklahoma State’s 49-17 blowout of Baylor. The...

The College Football Czar: Week 13 Week twelve in review: The sexual assault investigation involving Florida State quarterback Jameis Winston has taken an especially disturbing turn this week, with his accuser now saying that she had not voluntarily dropped the charges as previously reported, but that she was intimidated into silence. Perhaps the worst part of the story is that whatever the outcome, it is bound to be a miscarriage of justice. If Winston is innocent, he’ll still have suffered great damage to his reputation, and possibly to his career, depending on how he lets the attention affect him on...

The College Football Czar: Week 12 Week eleven in review: The College Football Czar has finally seen ESPN’s new Saturday night intro featuring Eminem’s “Berzerk.” In case you haven’t yet had the misfortune of experiencing it, Mr. Em liberally samples (i.e., steals) parts of Billy Squier’s 1981 hit, “The Stroke.” Memo to ESPN: You can’t have it both ways. You must now either pretend that Billy Squier is cool, or admit that Eminem is not. So which is it? The BCS picture cleared up very slightly last Thursday, with Oregon’s 26-20 loss at Stanford, a game whose tone was set...

President Barack Obama’s second term is off to a woeful start, plagued by deceit, scandal, and standoffs—and Governor Mitt Romney saw a lot of it coming last fall in his unsuccessful bid for the White House. Romney warned at the first presidential debate that Obamacare would be fully installed and cause many to lose their health insurance plans should Obama be re-elected. Romney was hardly the first Republican to see that coming, but President Obama pledged at the same debate, as he had dozens of times before, that Americans could keep their health insurance if they liked it under the...

The College Football Czar: Week 11 Week ten in review: Florida State’s big win over Miami pushed them back up to #2 in the BCS ratings, but there was otherwise very little movement, what with unbeaten Alabama, Oregon and Baylor all being idle. Since taking over as head coach at Grambling, former Pittsburgh Steeler linebacker Dirt Winston is 1-1, with an overtime loss to Texas Southern, and a 47-40 victory over Mississippi Valley State, which snapped an 18-game losing streak against NCAA opponents. Granted, those are not two of their better opponents in the SWAC, but the results are enough...

The College Football Czar: Week 10 Week nine in review: The horse race is on for the #2 BCS rating, with Oregon pulling ahead of Florida State on the strength of their 42-14 win over UCLA. They will likely trade places again this week, while the Ducks are idle, and the Noles face undefeated arch rival Miami. The College Football Czar takes back what he said about doubting Ohio State’s #4 rating in light of last week’s games. There has now developed a bold line of demarcation between the top four teams and everyone else. The most recent nominees for...

The College Football Czar: Week 9 Week eight in review: Despite the large percentage of teams that were idle, it proved to be the most consequential week to this point of the season, with eight ranked teams being upset by lower-ranked or unranked opponents. Many of the most surprising results were in the SEC, where LSU, Texas A&M and South Carolina were all beaten, and thus all but officially eliminated from the national championship picture. The first BCS ratings of the season are out, and as expected, Alabama is on top. Florida State is rated second, very slightly ahead of...

Movement-conservative icon, author, and direct-market pioneer Richard Viguerie threw down the gauntlet to establishment Republicans and the GOP leadership Tuesday, charging that conservatives "have been betrayed, abandoned by our leaders, and that includes Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Kevin McCarthy, [and] Reince Priebus at the Republican National Committee." Viguerie and other grass-roots conservative leaders are warning that Republicans who voted to end the shutdown on terms favorable to President Barack Obama and the Democrats will face major primary opposition in 2014.