Unmasking Punditry B.S.
The worlds' professional pontificators now have a sworn enemy. Wrong Tomorrow, a newly launched website, is getting Biblical on their ass, tracking predictions and recording their wrongness.
On its FAQ page, the site quotes from Matthew: "But I say unto you, that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment." Amen, brother! The actual author of the site is a hacker and painter named Maciej Ceglowski, who blogs at Idlewords.com. The actual predictions tend to be about the stock market (Dow 50,000, anyone?) or technology (Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer badmouthing the iPhone).
The website is nothing special, just another user-generated content engine. But anything that takes the work out of hoisting pundits by their own petard deserves praise. Bob Metcalfe, a venture capitalist who invented Ethernet, once predicted the failure of the Internet and ate his own words, pulped in a blender, on stage at a conference. At the risk of ending up on Wrong Tomorrow, I'm going to predict that will happen more often.