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Posts Tagged ‘the future’

Try Your Hand at Economic Forecasting

Think you can do a better job at predicting the economic future than all those economists and pundits?  Here’s your chance to prove it:

Members of the public are being encouraged to take on the Bank of England by betting on the U.K.’s future inflation and unemployment rates.

Free-market think tank the Adam Smith Institute on Wednesday launched two betting markets in an attempt to use the “wisdom of crowds” to beat the Bank of England’s official forecasters. Punters can place bets on what the rate of both U.K. inflation and unemployment will be on June 1, 2015.

Sam Bowman, the research director of the Adam Smith Institute, believes the new markets will “out-predict” official Bank of England predictions.  “If these markets catch on, the government should consider outsourcing all of its forecasts to prediction markets instead of expert forecasters,” he said.



Can You Change Your Destiny With Palm Surgery?

The Daily Beast reports that palm surgery is on the rise in Japan:

In Japan, where palm reading remains one of the most popular means of fortune-telling, some people have figured out a way to change their fate. It’s a simple idea: change your palm, change the reading, and change your future. All you need is a competent plastic surgeon with an electric scalpel who has a basic knowledge of palmistry. Or you can draw the lines on your hand with a marker and let him work the magic you want.

Missing a marriage line? That can be fixed. Wedding bells may ring.

Need some good fortune? Add a money-luck line and you might win the lottery or be promoted to vice president in your firm. For the smart shopper—one willing to undergo palm plastic surgery—the future isn’t what it used to be.

The surgery is evidently so popular that clinics don’t need to advertise.  In fact, one clinic’s brief advertising campaign resulted in so much demand they found themselves unable to keep up. “Maybe changing your palm won’t change your fate,” says plastic surgeon Takaaki Matsuoka, “but if you have that much determination to try to change it—and are willing to endure a little pain for that chance—maybe you can change your life.”

(HT: Isabel McCann)