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What will the new year bring?

In last year's office pool, for the second year running, I accurately predicted the best-picture Oscar winner. Forget all of the other predictions, which were varying degrees of mistaken; I shoulda been a film critic. The multiple choices include one, all or none. My picks are down below.

1. Next tyranny to feel the force of US liberation: (a) North Korea; (b) Iran; (c) Syria; (d) Venezuela.

2. Iraq will (a) split up, like all Gaul, into three parts; (b) defeat the insurgents and emerge a rudimentary democracy; (c) succumb to a Sunni coup.

3. First to fall from power will be (a) Little China's Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), whose two-China campaign oratory on Taiwan is asking for trouble with Big China; (b) Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf, double-crossed by his Islamist military; (c) the US's George W. Bush, after abandoning fiscal restraint; (d) Russia's Vladimir Putin as his electorate miraculously awakens; (e) Cuba's Fidel Castro.

4. Long-overdue exoneration will come to embattled media megastar (a) Martha Stewart; (b) Michael Jackson; (c) Kenneth Lay; (d) Pete Rose.

5. The economy will (a) see a booming 13,000 Dow and 3,000 Nasdaq; (b) grow more slowly as a weakening US dollar drives up interest rates; (c) be rocked by the abuse of manipulative derivatives in hedge funds.

6. The fiction best seller will be (a) Retribution by Jilliane Hoffman; (b) Confessions of a Bigamist by Kate Lehrer; (c) Flying Crows by Jim Lehrer (presumably one of Kate's husbands).

7. The nonfiction sleeper will be (a) Inside -- A Public and Private Life by Joseph Califano Jr; (b) Carl Zimmer's brainy Soul Made Flesh; (c) Michael Korda's biography of U.S. Grant; (d) Gertrude Himmelfarb's The Roads to Modernity.

8. The scientific advance of the year will be (a) age retardation enhanced by memory protection; (b) a single pill combining erectile dysfunction treatment with a fast-acting aphrodisiac; (c) neuroscientists' creation of a unified field theory of the brain; (d) the awakening of geneticists to the liberating study of bioethics.

9. Best-Picture Oscar: (a) Anthony Minghella's Cold Mountain; (b) Edward Zwick's The Last Samurai; (c) Clint Eastwood's Mystic River; (d) Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation; (e) Gary Ross's Seabiscuit. (This is the category I'm good at.)

10. Bush's domestic initiative will be (a) Social Security personal accounts; (b) community college scholarships; (c) a moon colony; (d) snowmobile restrictions in Florida parks.

11. The US Supreme Court (a) will decide that the rights of alien detainees in Guantanamo have not been violated; (b) will deadlock, 4-4 (Scalia recused), in the Pledge of Allegiance case, thereby temporarily affirming the Ninth Circuit decision declaring "under God" in the pledge unconstitutional; (c) in Tennessee v. Lane will uphold a state's immunity to lawsuits, limiting federal power in the Americans with Disabilities Act.

12. Howard Dean will (a) sweep Iowa and New Hampshire and breeze to a boring nomination; (b) lose to Gephardt in Iowa and do worse than expected in New Hampshire, leading to a long race; (c) transform himself into the centrist, affable "new Dean;" (d) angrily bolt and form a third party if the nomination is denied him.

13. The "October surprise" affecting our election will be (a) the capture of Osama bin Laden in Yemen; (b) the daring escape of Saddam Hussein; (c) a major terror attack in the US; (d) finding a buried bag of anthrax in Tikrit.

14. Debating Dick Cheney on TV will be the Democratic running mate (a) Wes Clark; (b) Bob Graham; (c) Bill Richardson; (d) Dianne Feinstein; (e) John Edwards; (f) Carl Levin.

My picks: 1. (none), 2. (b), 3. (e) (I've made this yearly prediction for three decades and now is not the time to stop), 4. (a), 5. (all), 6. (b), 7. (a), 8. (d), 9. (c) (Make my day, Clint!), 10. (b), 11. (all), 12. (b), 13. (c), 14. (b).
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