// -- set up global variables var avail = new Array() var para = new Array() var isSpace i = n = 0 // -- Available items para[0] = '

Rail travel at high speed is not possible, because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia
	Dr DIONYSYS LARDER (1793-1859), professor of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy, University College London

' para[1] = '

If Beethoven\'s Seventh Symphony is not by some means abridged, it will soon fall into disuse
	PHILIP HALE, Boston Music Critic, 1837

' para[2] = '

Flight by machines heavier than air is unpractical (sic) and insignificant, if not utterly impossible
	SIMON NEWCOMB (1835-1916), The Wright Brothers flew at Kittyhawk 18 months later. Newcomb was not impressed

' para[3] = '

We don\'t like their sound. Groups of guitars are on the way out
	UNNAMED DECCA EXECUTIVE, turning down the Beatles in 1962

' para[4] = '

The energy produced by the breaking down of the atom is a very poor kind of thing. Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformation of these atoms is talking moonshine
	ERNEST RUTHERFORD, shortly after splitting the atom for the first time

' para[5] = '

They couldn\'t hit an elephant at this dist ...
	Last words of \;Gen. JOHN SEDGWICK, spoken as he looked out over the parapet at enemy lines during the Battle of Spotsylvania in 1864

' para[6] = '

Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?
	H. M. WARNER, Warner Brothers, 1927, pouring cold water on the future of the new-fangled \'talkies\'

' para[7] = '

You wouldn\'t want to be in an airplane, you wouldn\'t want to be in an elevator, and you wouldn\'t want to be in a hospital... contingency plans need to be put into place to minimize the harm from widespread failures
	Sen. CHRIS DODD, Year 2000 Tech Committee Senate Hearings into the Millennium Bug, June 12, 1998

' para[8] = '

By the year 1982 the graduated income tax will have practically abolished major differences in wealth
	IRWIN EDMAN, professor of philosophy Columbia University, 1932

' para[9] = '

You better get secretarial work or get married
	EMMELINE SNIVELY, director of the Blue Book Book Modelling Modelling Agency advising would be model Marilyn Monroe in 1944

' para[10] = '

Very interesting Whittle, my boy, but it will never work
	CAMBRIDGE AERONAUTICS PROFESSOR, when shown Frank Whittle\'s plan for the jet engine

' para[11] = '

It will be gone by June
	VARIETY, passing judgement on rock \'n roll in 1955

' para[12] = '

Space travel is utter bilge
	RICHARD VAN DER RIET WOOLLEY, upon assuming the post of Astronomer Royal in 1956

' para[13] = '

You ain\'t going nowhere son —\; you ought to go back to drivin\' a truck
	JIM DENNY, manager of the Grand Ole Opry, on firing Elvis Presley after one performance in 1954

' para[14] = '

This antitrust thing will blow over
	BILL GATES, founder of Microsoft

' para[15] = '

The horse is here to stay but the automobile is only a novelty —\; a fad
	The president of the Michigan Savings Bank advising Henry Ford’s lawyer not to invest in the Ford Motor Co., 1903

' para[16] = '

I must confess that my imagination refuses to see any sort of submarine doing anything but suffocating its crew and floundering at sea
	HG WELLS, British novelist 1901

' para[17] = '

Radio has no future
	LORD KELVIN, Scottish mathematician and physicist, former president of the Royal Society, 1897

' para[18] = '

I think there is a world market for maybe five computers
	THOMAS WATSON, chairman of IBM, 1943 on seeing the first mainframe computer

' para[19] = '

Everything that can be invented, has been invented
	CHARLES DUELL, US commissioner of patents, 1899

' para[20] = '

Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You\'re crazy
	DRILLERS, who Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project to drill for oil in 1859.

' para[21] = '

Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau
	IRVING FISHER, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929

' para[22] = '

640K ought to be enough for anybody
	BILL GATES, speculating about the RAM needs of computer users

' para[23] = '

Men might as well project a voyage to the Moon as attempt to communicate electronically across or under the stormy North Atlantic Ocean
	Dr DIONYSYS LARDER (1793-1859), professor of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy, University College London

' para[24] = '

Brain work will cause women to go bald
	BERLIN PROFESSOR, 1914

' para[25] = '

And for the tourist who really wants to get away from it all, safaris in Vietnam
	NEWSWEEK, predicting popular holidays for the late 1960s

' para[26] = '

Special Forces for America & England will be invading Iraq before this summer ends
	LAWRENCE KUDLOW, The McLaughlin Group, July 27, 2002

' para[27] = '

[Bin Laden] will be confirmed dead by New Years\' Eve
	PAT BUCHANAN, The McLaughlin Group, October 5, 2001

' para[28] = '

Edmund Stoiber is going to be \[Germany\'s\] new Prime Minister
	LAWRENCE KUDLOW, The McLaughlin Group, Aug. 10, 2002

' para[29] = '

I think the biggest story on election night is going to be Jeb Bush\'s loss in this race
	CRAIG CRAWFORD, Hardball, MSNBC, Oct. 18, 2002

' para[30] = '

\[By 1985\], machines will be capable of doing any work Man can do
	HERBERT A. SIMON, of Carnegie Mellon University —\; considered to be a founder of the field of artificial intelligence —\; speaking in 1965

' para[31] = '

Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future
	NIELS BOHR, Nobel Laureate

' para[32] = '

Those who have knowledge don\'t predict. Those who predict don\'t have knowledge
	LAO TZU, 6th century B.C.

' para[33] = '

I\'m sorry, Mr Kipling, but you just don\'t know how to use the English language
	THE SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER, rejecting a submission by Rudyard Kipling in 1889

' para[34] = '

I would say that this does not belong to the art which I am in the habit of considering music
	A OULIBICHEFF, reviewing Beethoven\'s Fifth Symphony

' para[35] = '

Sure-fire rubbish
	LAWRENCE GILMAN, reviewing Porgy and Bess by George Gershwin in the New York Herald Tribune, 1935

' para[36] = '

Sterility may be inherited
	PACIFIC RURAL NEWS

' para[37] = '

Dewey Defeats Truman
	CHICAGO TRIBUNE, Nov. 4, 1948 after the convincing re-election of President Truman to office

' para[38] = '

In all likelihood world inflation is over
	INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND CEO, 1959

' para[39] = '

Democracy will be dead by 1950
	JOHN LANGDON-DAVIES, A Short History of The Future, 1936

' para[40] = '

Computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and perhaps only weigh one-and-a-half tons
	POPULAR MECHANICS MAGAZINE, getting it spectacularly wrong in 1949 (but then one of the first computers was called a bomb!)

' para[41] = '

The future will be better tomorrow
	DAN QUAYLE, getting to the point

' para[42] = '

The future, according to some scientists, will be exactly like the past, only far more expensive
	JOHN SLADEK

' para[43] = '

The world to an end shall come; in nineteen hundred and ninety-one
	OLD MOTHER SHIPTON, 16th century English mystic (an earlier Shipton transcription gave the date for Doomsday as 1981)

' para[44] = '

The Christian Coalition \[has\] speculated that President Clinton might use the chaos that Y2k unleashes as an opportunity to seize dictatorial powers
	TIME, Jan. 18, 1999

' para[45] = '

A short-lived satirical pulp
	TIME, writing off Mad magazine in 1956. Mad is still going. (So is TIME)

' para[46] = '

Nearly all experts agree that bacterial and viral diseases will have been virtually wiped out [by the year 2000]
	TIME, 1982

' para[47] = '

Remote shopping, while entirely feasible, will flop — because women like to get out of the house, like to handle merchandise, like to be able to change their minds
	TIME, 1966, in one sentence writing off e-commerce long before anyone had ever heard of it

' // -- generate urls while ( i < 999 ) { // -- pick a number, any number ... var a = Math.round(Math.random() * 49) // -- Is the item a). available and b). an item at all ... if (avail[a] != 'no' && para[a] != null) { avail[a] = 'no' document.write ( para[a] ) // -- Does this require space between quotes? if (isSpace != null) { document.write ( '

' ) } // -- have we reached the display limit? if (n > displayTotal - 2) { // -- If yes, this fails out of the loop i = 1000 } n++ } i++ }