Predictions are never a good idea. The trick is to make them vague enough to seem plausible when they are made--so that you can claim they actually "came true" when something plausibly similar occurs. Nostradamus was a master at this sort of nonsense. The longer he stays dead, the more his quackery makes sense to the faithful.

But, you know, this is the start of a new decade and all. So it's time for me to take a dive into the dreaded pool of prognostication. To make things easier, I've organized mine by subject.

Sports:
There will be a college football playoff by 2020. And when I say "college football," I mean that particular semi-professional sport played by big state schools and the private schools that are rich enough and dumb enough to try and keep up.

The Royals will get to the World Series, and the Chiefs will finally grace a Super Bowl stage during my lifetime. Both teams are young (the Royals so young that their best players won't play in K.C. until at least 2012) and those young players are good. I'd put the Chiefs in the Super Bowl after the 2013 or 2014 seasons, though it might happen a little earlier. The Royals are looking at the World Series in 2014 or 2015. I know, I'm the eternal homer optimist, but I feel pretty good about these picks.

The NHL will not gain much momentum on TV, but it will draw more fans than the fading NBA by the end of the decade.

Soccer will continue to grow in popularity--and score much better TV ratings than hockey--though it won't have nearly as many butts in the seats as the other major sports.

Books:
There will be new books in 2020. Not as many, to be sure, but geezers like me will still want to pick up a real live chunk of bound paper, sit on the back porch and nurse a bourbon or two. To be more specific, literary fiction will continue to see its volumes published. The biggest authors will be able to demand vanity publication, though I hope that every book is printed at least once--I just don't trust those electronic filing systems.

Newspapers:
Daily newspapers will not be printed in 2020. After Congress passes an anti-trust exemption for newspaper companies in 2013, a national electronic subscription system will finish off print for the dailies (you will, of course, continue to see all sorts of free weekly papers blowing around). Newspaper companies, however, will survive and in fact will be much more profitable by the end of the decade. More people will continue to get their news from "newspapers" than from any other source.

Movies:
Actors will still be employed in 2020. There will be many more movies like Avatar, but technology is much more likely to be used as it was in Inception. Animation is nice, but most of us want to see real people on screen. Indie movies will incorporate more and more special effects as the cost of technology drops precipitously. I expect to see impressive indie sci fi and horror films that look just as purty as major studio jobs. More SFX, less Claymation. Kids love new toys, after all.

I expect a renaissance of cinematic creativity as it becomes exponentially cheaper and cheaper to make (and release) a movie. Netflix will be distributing thousands of indie flicks online within a couple of years. And if you like that electronic file, you'll be able to buy a DVD (or Blu-Ray) hard copy and have it pressed on demand.

Music:
The business of music has already shifted to a model where profits are made on the road and from commercials and not from albums. This will continue with a vengeance. Bands will build their popularity with free releases online and then cash in once they're big enough to get solid guarantees for live shows and big bucks for TV ads. As for what that music will sound like, I expect to hear a further melding of electronic and "organic" sounds. Hip hop will continue to fade as a distinct genre as its stars continue to incorporate more and more sounds from all over the musical universe. I do expect that loud music (of all persuasions) will have a few good years in the middle of the decade.

Politics:
Obama will be re-elected. The Democrats will lose the Senate and fall just short of recapturing the House in 2012. The tax code will be reworked (see ya, home mortgage deduction!). At some point in 2011, the stated Constitutional justification which is now required for bills proposed in the House will boil down to the first sentence of Article I, Section 8: "The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States..." General welfare covers just about everything Congress might want to do, I'd say.

The President on January 20, 2017 will be someone who is not part of the national conversation right now. Probably a Democrat, but I'm only going 60-40 on that one.

World peace and shit:
Know Jesus, know peace. There is no God but God.

Nice slogans, but I think Megadeth is gonna have the last word on the coming decade: "Killing is my business, and business is good."

Jon Worley isn't a complete pessimist. He just gets pissed off now and again.