Just in time for the 25th anniversary of Black Monday crash, where the Dow lost 22% in one day.

It has a name - apophenia. We unconsciously fit the predictions to the present and thus give them more credence than they deserve.

I'd settle for a cheap and easy male contraception pill. If that came on the global market soon then I think the other 5 problems you mention would disappear within 25 years.

I'm sure I read somewhere that lighning cables are active, i.e. they have circuitry, chips etc, rather than just being copper cable. Same here? (would explain the price a bit I guess)

Some candy-sweet milk to go with your weird coloured honey.

August 4, 1997. It's running very late.

Lighten up AC. It's the guy's _hobby_, it's not meant to be especially practical, you know? (great fun though)

How come when something like 25,000 people die of malnutrition every day, food likely fit for human consumption is going to cattle? I bet it's all just a few days out of date too.

Parent is really talking about _affordable_ fossil fuels. You are absolutely right that there are centuries of supply left, but only because an increasingly smaller number of people will be able to afford it.

"it would be a huge shock to discover oxygen causes cancer in people"

Er... oxygen causes cancer in people. It's why antioxidants are popular:

Oxidative Stress

You are American, yes? If you all drove small 1 litre 50 horsepower cars instead of 6-litre 400 horsepower SUV monstrosities, you could also gain energy independence that way. (just a wild out-there blue-sky suggestion.)

iPhone or Droid

Reminded me more of Davd Hahn - thought he was maybe up to his old tricks again and looking for a large amount of Americium (not from fire alarms this time though).

It's kind-of sad that this question even needs to be asked after 3 generations of global mobile telephony.
  As Andy Tanenbaum said: "The nice thing about standards is that you have so many to choose from.".
You'd think that by now we could agree on a unified solution for 4G.

Well, strictly speaking the cloud is 'remote storage and remote processing', which is a bit of a mouthful. Cloud is one syllable in place of several, which is more of a practicality than marketing hype IMHO.