Some say our era is dominated by the war between the left and the right. But the real war right now is the war of the present against the future. 

Reading a book about 1913 Vienna illuminates a 2013 book about a future of inevitable progress.

While the surreal drama of the Marathon Bombing and the subsequent manhunt was going on last week, I was reading two books about the future.

I was expecting to be annoyed by Al Gore's book The Future, and to be energized by Byron Reese's Infinite Progress. But it didn't quite turn out that way.

The past is prologue to scenario consultants. Things that happened on April 10 through history.

If you had anticipated these things happening before they did, on April 9 throughout history, we might have hired you as a scenario consultant. If we had been around.

Things that happened on April 7 through history.

Scenarios of the future! Only, we have to pretend they didn't already happen on April 6 in previous years. 

Russians on ice, Native Americans, Finland as bellwether for America, an anti-democracy riot, and one giant cool explosion.

Improbable scenarios that happened on the 4th of April through history.