Will this be the year?

I am not very excited about 2010, mostly for selfish reasons. I would like the clock to stand still so I can take care of some unfinished business. I am fed up of watching the years accumulate without a corresponding increase in the bank balances!

That petty thought having been aired, there are some things that we know about 2010. Nobody expects the world to end in 2010, that honor being reserved for 2012. There will be the football world finals in South Africa during the southern hemisphere winter of 2010 and an African team is not expected to win the so-called World Cup.

There will be congressional elections in the United States towards the end of 2010. The Democratic Party will face a whipping at the polls, perhaps not enough to overturn their majorities in congress but enough to slow down Barack Obama's increasingly unpopular agenda!

There will be more black babies born to single mothers than at any time ever in the history of the world. Black men will continue to be slightly less than half of the US prison population despite blacks being only about 12% of the overall population.

High school graduation rates in inner city neighborhoods in the US will stay well below 50%. Black unemployment will continue to exceed the national average in Barack Obama's America. The Afghan war will accelerate, even as the US footprint in Iraq diminishes.

Across the central Atlantic, on the expansive continent of Africa, many questions will remain unanswered. Will this be the year when Zimbabwe's immortal leader finally realizes that he is mostly flesh and blood with a little conceit to weld it all together? I would not bet my old tennis shoes on it.
Can we expect any surprises in 2010? As a SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) volunteer, I am always cautiously optimistic that we might be able to detect a signal from deep space that is consistent with transmission by an intelligent species!

Now that would be something worth blogging and bragging about!