It Begins

Since I starting writing this blog, one of my recurring themes has been the manuscript sent to me by my former college roommate, David G. Over the years, I have typed out and published on this page some of the chapters he wrote out describing his wish to commit suicide. The last time I posted anything by David was nearly two years ago when I posted the first part of his Chapter 5.

However, I have not been idle with David’s work.

I have spent the last pair of years (with time off for the move between France and Thailand) editting and typing out David’s work (which I pray is not his last).

While I am not yet 100% complete, I am nearly there and hope to have his completed work out by the end of 2014.

In the meantime, I have signed up with the online publishing website, Booksie, to put what is complete out on the Web.

Today, I put up the first two chapters of Form Your Troika. You can start here.

We’ll see how this experiment goes.

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Veridiction: Sue Mi Terry

Today’s batter at the verdiction plate (veridiction = my completely created name for the process of verifying predictions) is Sue Mi Terry, a former analyst with the Central Intelligence Agency (also known as the CIA by all the really cool kids) and professor at Columbia University (which has no cool name for the kids to call it).

Back in April of last year, during the time when the leader of North Korea was becoming all uppity and belligerent, Sue Mi Terry – according to this article from WIRED magazine – made the assertion that, “North Korea will launch an attack.”

She goes on to say that, “it [the attack] will be something sneaky and creative and hard to definitively trace back to North Korea to avoid international condemnation and immediate retaliation from Washington or Seoul.”

So how did that whole “will launch an attack” prediction turn out?

You may forgive yourself if you don’t recall North Korea starting an attack in 2013 – sneaky or otherwise – because it never happened.

Swing and a miss for Professor Terry.

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Veridiction: PJ Crowley

It’s January (as it is every year around this time) and that means that it’s time again to look back and look forward.

For me and this blog, January means it is time to dive into my file of veridiction (my completely made-up name for the process of verifying predictions) and see who hit a grand slam and who whiffed at the plate.

Today’s batter is Philip J. “P.J.” Crowley, the former United States Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs.

Back in December of 2011, Mr. Crowley penned a piece about the Arab Spring that appeared on the website for BBC News. You can read that story for yourself by jumping over to this link.

In that article about the wave of freedom sweeping across Arab lands, Mr. Crowley wrote, “A leadership change is…inevitable in Syria.”

So how has that prediction of an “inevitable” change in leadership panned out?

Well, putting aside the obvious fact that since the leadership of Syria will inevitably change at some point in time in the future because the man who ran Syria at the end of 2011, Bashar al-Assad, is mortal and will die at some point, I don’t think Mr. Crowley had type of leadership change in mind when he wrote his piece.

I am going to surmise that by using the phrase “inevitable” that Mr. Crowley meant that al-Assad would be ousted one way or another and that his departure would be sooner rather than later.

Putting Mr. Crowley’s prediction to the test, we find that a little over two years have passed and Bashar al-Assad still remains at the helm of the Syrian government.

Swing and a miss for Mr. Crowley.

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