Never make predictions,” said the American baseball manager Casey Stengel, “especially about the future.” Alas, I have never been able to resist an invitation to emulate Nostradamus, though without developing the flair for ambiguity and impenetrability that has enabled his enthusiasts to claim that he foresaw everything.
So when, for the January 1 edition of this newspaper, I was asked to write 100 words of predictions for 2007, I embraced the task with diligence and as many prophecies as possible were squeezed into the space available.
So imagine my horror when I opened the page of predictions and discovered that most of my colleagues had deftly managed to offer the fewest possible hostages to fortune in their contributions or had written elegant homilies on how