J. Michael Andresen

Entry deadline is 3:30 p.m. CST on Saturday, January 12, 2013 . Send fifteen answers and one tie-break to jmandresen at gmail.com. Anyone with an email address is welcome to enter. The winner receives a deluxe gift bag. Happy guessing! 1. Freedom (January) Freedom House is an international organization that studies democracy and freedom in the world, publishing an annual report on how many of countries are free, partly free, or not free. The 2012 report calculated that 87 of the world’s 193 nations were “free” in 2011. Will freedom advance, stay stagnant, or retreat in this year’s report, covering 2012? The number of times each answer has occurred since the fall of the iron curtain is indicated in parentheses. Note: the ten worst "free" countries (with the highest likelihood of being downgraded) are Antigua and Barbuda, Botswana, El Salvador, Guyana, India, Indonesia, Jamaica, Mali, Montenegro, and Peru. The fifteen best "partly free" countries (with the hi...

Ravi Shankar, perhaps the best-known contemporary Indian musician , passed away yesterday. This means that (s) Ravi Shankar is now a correct answer to Question 13 - 15 of the 2012 Prognostication Quiz . This was very surprising to everyone in the Prognostication Quiz, since nearly everyone expected him to survive another three weeks to see 2013. Only one person thought that Shankar might pass on this year: The sitar hater: Ekrem I also get the feeling that Ekrem did not really want to pick Shankar. Rather, he needed an answer S near the end to get his prizewinning entry "BAD ABBA FADED FAST" to come out correctly. Although this small victory pulls Ekrem up into the tie for second place, he still has nearly no chance of winning overall. For his tie-break, he predicted that the Dow will fall 99.1% from its current position to close the year at 116. Even if we fall off the fiscal cliff and break our fical neck, I really don't see that happening. The summ...