Delta and Sigma scans

The days between Christmas and New Year are almost always a good time to find odd stuff (today, I went through a bunch of notes from several years back - found several good patent ideas, too). But then you get bored and surf the net.
With luck, you find stuff like the Sigma scan and the Delta scan, both paid for by the British governement (that's how you should use taxpayer money!). Pretending to look 50 years into the future, they actually do two completely different things:
1. They show what the world is like now. What we predict about the future is a reflection of our current worldview - remember the plastic houses, personal helicopters, and food pills of the 50's? And did you ever notice that most of them missed the women entering the work force?
2. They are a surefire indicator that we are on the top of the curve. For those who survived the roaring millenium shift, you will remember all the outlandish predictions. It's not that bad - these two are really useful - but when people fund stuff like this, they have too much money, and then you know that the only way is down into recession. It may be a few years, but the chartists may be right and we may see it in 2011. Not before the Beijing Olympics, I am sure.
Just make sure to use the good years to stock up, and remember that there were seven bad years after the seven good ones in the bible, although the cycles seem to have become shorter. Well, technology had to have some advantages, after all.