I read this headline while perusing the news today:  "Year of Pig signals conflicts before new world order:  soothsayers."

Now a lot of people reading that headline might focus in on the phrase "Year of the Pig" and not realize that that refers to the Chinese New Year coming up this weekend.  Some people might be drawn to the phrase "new world order" and go off on a tangent about the coming one-world government that is scheduled to engulf us all in the 21st century.  None of those people are me.  What caught my eye was the group to which this headline was ascribed:  soothsayers.

Soothsayers?  How do you get to be a soothsayer?  Is there a regulatory commison who licenses soothsayers?  What is a soothsayer, exactly?

The semantics of the word, after some research, seems to come from the archaic English word "sooth," meaning truth.  So a soothsayer is someone who "says the truth" right?  No.  From the word sooth came the verb "to soothe," meaning to placate, comfort or calm.  So a soothsayer is someone who "says things that are comforting," right?  Have you ever heard a soothsayer say anything positive?  Come on.  It's all doom and gloom.  You see before the word soothsayer entered the vernacular, the ancient word sooth had come to mean "a person who assents to the truth" or "says yes to a statement in order to placate them."  This is the origin of the word soothsayer, so literally a soothsayer is:  One who says things to placate others.  We further bastardized the word to mean someone who claims to foretell the future.  A sort of cosmic yes man.  Since the future hasn't happened yet, there is no way to tell whether or not he or she is telling the truth.

Okay, I understand the origins of the word, now how do I get to be one?  Well, just like becoming a psychic detective, there is no governing agency for becoming a soothsayer.  It seems all that needs to be done is to declare yourself one, begin making predictions and it is so.

So, as of now, I declare myself a soothsayer.  Here, therefore, is the first sooth I am saying:

In the next 50 to 75 years newspapers will cease to exist in printed form and libraries housing volumes of written material will be rare.  People will read their daily "newspapers" and virtually all other printed material on the Internet.  The majority of people will utilize a laptop computer no bigger than an average sized book of today.  They will carry it with them and never leave home without it.  In a related sooth:  Before the end of the century the government will completely control the Internet.

Say it ain't so.