CULTURE/SOCIETY, SCIENCE/TECHNOLOGY and ENTERTAINMENT: A Look At 2009 From The Past

Well, I tried to find what some of the older movies and books that 2009 would look like, but this is the best I could do. - OlderMusicGeek.

Predictions on Triviagasm from the website io9.

We Will Perfect Time Travel and Upload Our Consciousness to Computers (Freejack (1992)): In 2009, we will use time travel to steal bodies from the past moments before death. The still-living bodies will then be sold to the highest bidder, who may have already uploaded their consciousness to a machine. The lucky buyer will then take over the stolen body and start life anew.

Americans Will Struggle Through a Post-Apocalyptic Existence (The Postman by David Brin (1985)): Seventeen years after an apocalyptic event, Americans will continue to live without a postal service, radio system, or central government. Instead, they will live in isolated communities, waiting for signs of civilization's return. And, in 2009, a man in a postal uniform will start visiting these communities, carrying with him what appears to be a letter from the provisional government with promises for a better future.

A link to the piece and all the movies and books it mentions

From Wikipedia...

From the entry for Dark Angel...
On June 1, 2009, terrorists detonate an electromagnetic pulse weapon in the atmosphere over the U.S., which destroys the vast majority of computer and communication systems, throwing the country into utter chaos.

But here's some excerpts from an interesting piece from a 1909 article in New York Times.

The most interesting of (Jules Bois') predictions, perhaps, is that the present ideal of feminine beauty will have ceased to be held by the majority of the Caucasian race...

Further, M. Bois believes that motor cars will in a hundred years be things of the past, and a kind of flying bicycle will have been invented... Hardly anyone will remain in the cities at night. They will be places of business only. People of every class will reside in the country or in garden towns at considerable distances from the populous centres. Pneumatic railways and flaying cars and many other means of quick transit will be so developed...

"I believe," said M. Bois in conclusion, "that government by representatives bodies will be greatly modified. Nations will be governed by delegates of different castes...."

I got this from the website Paleo-Future, which describes itself as "A look into the future that never was". I think it's worth a check! I cut the article down, you can see the whole thing here.

Thomas Quotes Max Factor On The Woman Of The Future

HOLLYWOOD (A.P.) -- Fifty years from now, a woman of 50 will be just as alluring as a girl of 20.

"When my father started the company in 1909, women scarcely used cosmetics at all," (Max Factor) commented. "They pinched their cheeks to give them color. The only ones who painted their lips were women of questionable repute or theatrical types - and there was little distinction between the two.

"Gradually, the use of makeup became almost universal among women. Now girls start wearing it at 14 or younger instead of waiting until they are 18."

What about 50 years hence?

"People will be living longer. People will want to avoid the lines and sags of old age as long as possible.

"I firmly believe that in the future women of 50 years or more will look as appealing as girls of 20. We are keeping in touch with scientific experiments in Europe on youth-giving cosmetics."

Factor also foresees the extensive use of cosmetics by men 50 years from now, and for the same reason; to keep young. Men who live longer will want to work longer; hence they'll need to avoid looking aged. Among the Factor predictions: A pill which will forestall the graying of hair.

A link to the complete article on Paleo-Future

Paleo-Future's posts on the year 2009
"8 Movie Futures Already Proven Wrong" from Cracked.com

CULTURE/SOCIETY: Skeletons In The Closet

I don't know how true this is, but I found it interesting. It's from my work's newsletter. - OlderMusicGeek

Explaining the ‘skeleton in the closet’

Hundreds of years ago when English physicians wanted to learn about the human body, it was difficult because there were numerous regulations to follow.

Doctors were typically allowed to dissect only one body over the course of their education, and once the dissection had been accomplished, the physicians were reluctant to give up their prized possessions.

But it wasn’t socially acceptable to keep the skeletons, according to Webb Garrison in his book Why You Say It. Consequently, doctors often hid them in a dark corner or closet where they wouldn’t be discovered easily. Eventually the phrase “skeleton in the closet” came to mean hidden evidence of any kind.

SCIENCE: Hotel Maids Challenge the Placebo Effect

This is a report from NPR that I found pretty interesting. I edit it to make it read more quickly. Here's a link if you want to read the complete article. - OlderMusicGeek

Hotel Maids Challenge the Placebo Effect
by Alix Spiegel
Morning Edition, January 3, 2008

In a recent study, Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer decided to look at whether our perception of how much exercise we are getting has any effect on how our bodies actually look.

As any casual observer of the hospitality industry knows, hotel maids spend the majority of their days lugging heavy equipment around endless hallways. Basically, almost every moment of their working lives is spent engaged in some kind of physical activity.

But Langer found that most of these women don't see themselves as physically active. She did a survey and found that 67 percent reported they didn't exercise. More than one-third of those reported they didn't get any exercise at all.

Perceptions Matter

Langer says, despite the fact all of the women in her study far exceeded the U.S. surgeon general's recommendation for daily exercise, the bodies of the women did not seem to benefit from their activity.

She and her team measured the maids' body fat, waist-to-hip ratio, blood pressure, weight and body mass index. They found that all of these indicators matched the maids' perceived amount of exercise, rather than their actual amount of exercise.

So Langer set about changing perceptions.

She divided 84 maids into two groups. With one group, researchers carefully went through each of the tasks they did each day, explaining how many calories those tasks burned. They were informed that the activity already met the surgeon general's definition of an active lifestyle.

The other group was given no information at all.

One month later, Langer and her team returned to take physical measurements of the women and were surprised by what they found. In the group that had been educated, there was a decrease in their systolic blood pressure, weight, and waist-to-hip ratio — and a 10 percent drop in blood pressure.

One possible explanation is that the process of learning about the amount of exercise they were already getting somehow changed the maids' behavior. But Langer says that her team surveyed both the women and their managers and found no indication that the maids had altered their routines in any way.

Essentially, what Langer is talking about is a placebo effect. She says that if you believe you are exercising, your body may respond as if it is. It's the same as if you believe you are getting medication when you are actually getting a sugar pill — your body can sometimes respond as if a placebo is actually working.

Placebo Effect Limited?

But Martin Binks, director of behavioral health at the Duke Diet and Fitness Center in North Carolina, says, "There's a very high likelihood that [the maids] behaved differently after they received that information, and they were being more active and eating more healthfully. And that resulted in their improvements in health."

But Binks has a more substantive criticism.

"Generally what placebos work on is subjective types of findings," he says.

In other words, a placebo can help change something like your perception of pain or perhaps your sense of whether you feel depressed, but it can't do something objective like shrink a tumor or cut three pounds off your waistline.

Or can it?

Howard Brody, the director of the Institute for the Medical Humanities at the University of Texas Medical Branch and the author of the book, The Placebo Response, has spent years looking at this issue. He says that a number of relatively new studies challenge the old assumption that the placebo effect alters only subjective perception.

For example, Brody notes one study where researchers gave asthmatic patients a drug that actually makes asthma worse. When they gave the drug to the patients, they told them that it relieves asthma.

"A significant number of those patients said that my asthma got better when you gave them the drug," Brody says, "and they measured better when you measured the lung findings."

Alink to the complete article