Rothenburger — The genius of making predictions

COLUMN — As we approach 2015, we are assaulted, once again, with “year-end reviews” that tell us what we already knew, and predictions for the coming year that almost always prove false.

A year ago, I made my own predictions, the outcomes of which I will review here. You will, no doubt, be amazed at their accuracy, and will call me a sorcerer, but I prefer to think of it simply as a work of genius.

10. Rob Ford will apologize for something.

Nailed it. He apologized to a Toronto councillor for lewd comments he made about her. He apologized to another councillor for robo-calling his ward. He apologized for swearing. “I really f…d up,” he said. He apologized for his past behavior. “I sincerely, sincerely, sincerely apologize,” he said.

9. After the civic election, not one winning candidate will refuse to take the pay increase voted in by the 2013 council.

Nailed it again. While the pay increase came in for some minor criticism during the election, and at least one candidate said he’d lead a move to have the increase cancelled, none of the successful candidates has said he or she won’t take the raise. This might not be a big surprise to you, but in the world of predictions, it counts.

8. Somewhere, a pit bull owner will be quoted as saying, “He’s never done anything like that before. He’s a wonderful family dog.”

A news report today (Dec. 30, 2014) says an elderly man was attacked by two pit bulls in Langley, and a family’s pit bull-Rottweiler cross mauled a three-week-old baby in Saanich. A father of four was found dead on Christmas Day in Indiana after an attack by one of his pit bulls named Fat Boy. “I don’t want people to think bad of pit bulls,” said the man’s wife. “They were playful dogs… It was just a freak accident…I think it’s something that just went wrong.”

7. The owner of an assault rifle will say, “If everybody had a gun, we’d all be safer.”

Canada’s National Firearms Association was criticized shortly before Christmas for an ad that featured Santa Claus giving an AR-15 rifle — similar to one used in the Sandy Hook massacre — to a child and telling him, “Don’t shoot your eye out, kid!” This was an apparent reference to the movie A Christmas Story. A Gallup poll in November showed that more than six in 10 Americans believe having a gun in a household makes it safer.

6. KGHM International will hold a public-information meeting on the proposed Ajax mine. The location may or may not be announced.

Okay, that was a bit of a smart-alecky prediction based on KGHM’s practice of holding meetings by invitation only. And the company did hold a big rally for supporters-only in the Interior Savings Centre early in the year but it did also hold some public open houses, notably in Knutsford, and more recently to explain its new site plan in connection with Environmental Assessment Office sessions.

5. Supermarkets will start selling beer and wine. The world will not end.

I got a little ahead of myself on this. It was announced just before Christmas that some grocery stores will be able to sell wine in 2015 as long as it’s a 100-per-cent B.C. product. As of April 1, independent wine stores may transfer licences to eligible grocery stores. April Fool’s Day seems an appropriate day for the world to end.

4. A senior will say, “I want more exercise. I can’t wait for community mailboxes.”

I was dead wrong on this one. I’m still waiting for a senior to say community mail boxes are a great thing. In the meantime, vandalism and thefts at community mail boxes are on the increase in B.C.

3. A study done by a professor at an obscure community college in the U.S. will conclude that donuts are better for us than kale.

I was a little off the mark on this one, too. I read this year that a Krispy Kreme raspberry-filled jam doughnut contains 300 calories, If you eat a donut a day, you will gain one pound every 10 days. I did find an older Psychology Today article that said a donut for breakfast wakes up your brain because of its sugar content. On the other hand, the fascination with kale (and, fortunately, coconut water) seems to have passed. Now, it’s kimchi, which, as near as I can tell, is rotting cabbage. Swiss chard is gaining some favour, and some say Cauliflower is on the verge of a big comeback. Cauliflower.

2. Someone trying to pay for parking in downtown Kamloops will start muttering, “The horror, the horror,” flapping his or her arms, throwing credit cards and coins into the air, and will be placed in a van by men in white coats and taken away.

Correct again. That parking patron was me.

1. Clover the Kermode bear will wake up at the B.C. Wildlife Park, look around, and decide it’s smarter to go back to sleep for the rest of the year.

Clover did, indeed, come out and look around for awhile, then went back to sleep. When he wakes up again next spring, he will have a brand new enclosure to walk around in while people stare at him.

According to my math, I hit  about 75 per cent on my predictions for 2014. I think I’ll rest on my laurels for next year.

armchairmayor@gmail.com.