The Future Disappoints When It Becomes the Present

Today CNN discovers that the future ain't what it used to be. What they don't seem to have noticed is that no future is what it was used to be, because it was never supposed to be that future in any real, predictive sense. Ask any science fiction writer. The key word in the phrase "science fiction future" is fiction. (Futurists are a different breed of cat, but would still, I think, admit they're doing thought experiments rather than concrete predictions.) But I still want a jetpack, and I want teleportation of things more substantial than photons. Stupid future.


In other news, there have been strange melty circles on the ice of Lake Baikal:





(via io9 and xenophilia)