Scientific Controversy

It's gotta be Climate Change which continues to be hotly (or coldly) debated.
Five of our contestants had this as their pick so they get 5 points each:
Ellen, Bret, Parker, Wendy, Tom & Beth.







Simon Bar Sinister says, "Go Snow"

Iowa Unemployment for December 2010

The unemployment figures for December were just announced. The rate for Iowa was 6.3 in December. The closest prediction was Parker who guessed 6.2. He gets 4 points for his almost perfect prediction!

# 6 Olympic Scoring

The Winter Olympics have been history for a while. If you have followed this blog, you may remember my posting of February 18th, I gave a chart of everyone's predictions.
Here is what actually happened:
Total Medal Count: 37 (Jaimie guessed 35 and Ben 41. One point for each)
Gold: 9 (Parker guessed 8 , Wendy and Ellen 10. One point each)
Silver: 15 (Jerry guessed 15 exactly. 2 Points.)
Bronze: 13 (Jerry guessed 13 exactly, Ben guessed 14 and Wendy 12. 2 points for Jerry, One each for Ben and Wendy.)

#5 Longest 15 minutes of fame

For the longest 15 minutes of fame I decided to let Google News do the work for me. I set up a news search for all of 2010 and just searched the terms given. As anyone who follows this blog may have guessed, I (Jill) won this with Sarah Palin. If your last name starts with a C and you live in Hardin county under a rock, you may not know it but Ms. Palin has 2 (yes 2!) TV shows now.

5 POINTS FOR JILL- YOU BETCHA!

Below are the official results:

Ellen- Mike Huckabee- About 3,550 results
Bret- Would be presidential assassin-About 367 results
Jerry- Rod Blagojevich ministry- About 11 results
Parker- Zach Galifianakis-About 3,500 results
Gail-Pauly from Jersey Shore.-About 791 results
Ben-Rush Limbaugh.-About 4,410 results
Jill-Sarah Palin-About 35,500 results (the clear winner!!)
Amanda- Rod Blagojevich-About 4,780 results
Jaimie- Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag- About 1,870 results
Wendy- Custody battle with a surrogate mother who is actually a grandmother.- 5 results
Jeff- Obama and Tiger Woods partying (with out partying About 1,410 results
Tom and Beth- Paris Hilton’s dog. It is kidnapped! About 14 results

#4 Iowa Unemployment for December

I am going to skip this one until the figures for December are released later this month.

# 3 Worst Natural Disaster

It was definitely the Haitian earthquake but this happened before we got our predictions in (sorry Jaimie no points for predicting something that has happened already). The second worse disaster was the Pakistani floods. No one predicted this.
Again, I will give partial to those who predicted something that happened although it wasn’t the worst.
Amanda- Earthquake beyond Hati- Chinese and Chilean earthquake. (1 point)
Bret- Volcano- Icelandic volcano- although not a big taker of lives, very big in economic disruption. (1 point)
Parker- Asian earthqueake- Again the Chinese earthquake. (1 point)
Gail- Hurricane hits the Northeast. Hurricane Earl!! Good guess, not a biggie in terms of losses though. (1 point)
Ben- Chinese drought. (1 point)
Jill- Earthquake in China (1 point)
Jeff- Florida freeze, although we don't know if this is from Global Cooling (1/2 point)
Tom and Beth- West coast flooding. Late in 2010 there was some pretty heavy flooding in California. (1 point).
What is interesting is what didn't happen: No hurricane in Florida this year, no terrible Midwest flooding and the tornado season this year was pretty normal.

#2 Top Medical Stories 2010

Here is what I asked for, " The top 10 medical stories found on WebMD will include..”. and all year I waited for WebMD to do this story like they did last year. Finally, I searched WebMD site and found the Top Stories of the Year, only it just gave 5. Unfortunately, none of our predictions made this list, although some were kind of close. So, for scoring, if the person had something close to what was on the list, I gave them 2 points, if they had something that actually happened and made the news, I gave them 1 point. I awarded ½ a point for those predictions who made the news but in a more futuristic point of view.

• Parker predicted a new infectious disease would start spreading causing fear and panic but will eventually turn into something that’s not a big deal. Whooping cough came back and so for this, I am awarding Parker 2 points.
  
• Amanda predicted brain transplants, and better HIV/AIDS vaccines. Although this was not ground breaking news, I gave her 1 point based on the fact that partial brain transplants are possible although not common and there are now much improved HIV vaccines.
• Jaimie predicted a cure for type-one diabetes. Although this too was not seen as important news, Islet cell transplantation is now possible so she gets 1 point.
• Ellen predicted that the obesity epidemic would shorten expected life spans in US. In December the CDC reported that US life expectancy has dropped a 10^th of a year from 2007, although they don’t say why. For this I am awarding 1 point.
• Bret predicted the failure of the Obama healthcare plan. The Health Care plan was actually a top story, although instead of its failure, the story focused on understanding health care reform legislation. For this, I am giving Bret 1 point.
• I (Jill) predicted a new diet drug. I just got in the wire on this. In December the FDA started the approval for Contrave, a new diet drug that works on your cravings. It is not on the market yet so I am only giving myself ½ of a point. Interestingly, no new diet drug has been approved by the FDA in the last 10 years.
• Wendy predicted stem cell therapy for diabetes would occur. This is still not a reality although lots of research is being done on it. ½ point.
• Tom and Beth predicted genetic therapy breakthroughs. Still a promise but not yet. ½ point.

The rest of the predictions were not even close although Bed Bugs would have seen far out back in january 2010 too. If anyone would like to challenge my rulings, have at it!

#1 Hottest electronic of 2010- the 'droid

Kudo's to Gail who predicted that the droid phone would be the hottest electronic device under $500. As posted before, this was a close race between the Android and iPhone but the loss of the Blackberry market was overtaken by the Android Smartphones. Read here for more details.

2010 wrap up part one

1. The top selling electronic device under $500 will be...

This was a lot more difficult to tally than I thought it would be. In many was it was an apple verses orange comparison. Lots of people bought High Definition TVs but in many cases they cost more than $500. We had guesses that stuck to certain brands, (Kindle) and some that named a technology (netbook). Within brands and technologies, the divisions also became more complex. For instance, “droid cellphone” is not one kind of cellphone but actaully refers to the Androis OS used on many different smartphones, such as the HTC or Motorola Droid. You then compare it to the iPhone (iOS) and Blackberry (RIM OS). Right now the race for top in this category is between the iPhone and the Android OS loaded Smartphones. Blackberry (RIM OS), your star is falling!

When the dust settles later this month, it will be either Gail ((Android) or Tom, Beth and Jeff (iPhone) as winners. Netbooks, iPods and eBook readers were all popular and newcomer Kinect also generated a lot of sales (partial points will be awarded) but cell phones remain the top electronic devices.