BLOG details

 

E-mail: dca@netspeed.com.au

 

Blog address : https://donallan.wordpress.com

 

Armstrong’s one small leap for mankind is but a minor event compared to my leaping into a Blog after two years of pressure by friends who insisted that a wider readership would enjoy my column in The Chronicle and other issues I might write about. Whether or not that is true I will soon find out.

 

Readers from outside Canberra should be aware that much of the focus, but not all, of the Blog will be about Canberra although it will also be about issues that I think interest people.

 

And to those Canberrans who currently don’t read The Chronicle let me say they should start getting a copy as not only is its local news content better than any other Canberra paper it also carries a Seven Days TV Guide. 

 

Here’s to good reading and my hope that you enjoy the great blogging experiment.    .

 

Don’s Runic predictions

 

At midnight, 31 December 1999, the eve of Millennium III, when Murphy’s Law – anything that can go wrong will go wrong – didn’t work, both Murphy and Prophets of Doom from the new religions, environmentalism for example, who, having regularly predicted that if we didn’t pay attention to their messages the end of the world and civilisation as we know it was nigh, were so disappointed they cried into their beer.

 

However, when they realised the world was carrying on as usual, they stopped crying. Had they not, the flood that would have resulted form their tears would have made the melting of the world’s ice sheets seem like a trickle and the only survivors people who had replicated Noah’s Ark in their back garden and provisioned it with enough food and fresh water to last for decades.

 

But let me be serious; Millennium III will be as full of change as Millennium II. Though no Nostradamus, I will advise Murphy and the new religions’ Prophets of Doom to heed the old saying: predictions make fools of us all. However convinced that they are right about the future my view is that despite their predictions, doom is not on the future’s radar.

 

I am persuaded also to the view that as time goes by the sporting religions, cricket, rugby league, rugby union, Aussie Rules and even football (soccer to the philistines) whose adherents revered their gods will have died or be ready to die. Athletics and the Olympic Games will have died also because man’s capacity to run faster, jump higher and swim faster will have peaked. (Imagine trying to watch a 100 metres race that takes only 5 seconds to run. You’d miss it if you blinked.  However, new sports will develop and computers will be all pervasive.

 

Current political parties will have gone also and been replaced by new parties. In turn, new forms of government will have been created with politicians employed on performance contracts that can be terminated at any time by those who elected them. And an on line voting system will also be used to elect and remove them.

 

On the energy front Nuclear Fusion will be the universal power source; on the wealth front, the rich will still be getting richer and the poor poorer; and poverty will still be with us. But I can see a leader emerging from among the poor, disabled and disadvantaged who will lead a global revolution in the quest for a more equitable society.

 

Australia might also have started moving towards becoming a continent of sovereign autonomous regions.

 

Early in this millennium housing problems will have been overcome with houses made of as yet undiscovered materials and easily transported with all house functions controlled by computers. Using computers, education will be home based also and because of the continuous movement of people across Australia and the world a variety of dialects will have developed across continental Australia.

 

And as the earth moves inevitably towards population saturation, satellite worlds will have been launched. The people populating these satellite worlds will be of like mind and social habits. Among the satellites will be one for people to whom trees mean more than people; a number of them will be for people of various religious beliefs; one for whom marriage is the union of a man and woman; one for homosexuals and Lesbians that meets their requirements; one for Transgender People and one for clones. There will be many others. The earth will simply be a tourism destination. 

 

Current religions will have been replaced with new science and technology religions. The average human life span will be: females – 275 years, males – 265 years. And though most current life-threatening diseases will have been eradicated, unfortunately many new ones will have taken their place.

 

Despite civilisation’s alleged advance, on the new satellite worlds, history will be repeating itself, with wars, political, economic and religious, still being fought.

 

However, at long last Canberra will have achieved a long cherished dream of being a major tourist destination as tourists from the satellite worlds, visit Earth curious to see the relics of a 20th century social engineering experiment that went wrong.

 

A final prediction: Murphy and the Prophets of Doom will still be around.