Word: predictable
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...hard to predict what the the Pope will do, or what will happen next. Cardinal Law's fate may offer insights but no real parallels, even though Cardinal Ratzinger held the same position in Munich as Law held in Boston. Law was a very high Prince of the Church when the Boston scandal broke, but Ratzinger is now the Supreme Pontiff. No one should expect a papal resignation - indeed, both as Vatican Cardinal and as Pontiff, Benedict has been more responsive than many of his colleagues on clergy sex abuse. Still, the Church's history of silence is galling...
...special security laws and 30,000 troops have been posted to the capital to maintain order. Government spokesman Panitan Wattanayagorn said that some red shirts want to provoke the military into responding with violence so the majority of the public would turn against the Prime Minister. "I wouldn't predict the outcome," says Chris Baker, a Thailand-based political and economic analyst...
...China now has a growing military demand, it has always upheld the principle of peaceful development. The double-digit increases in the past should be interpreted as compensational growth," says Zhao Zongjiu, deputy secretary-in-general at Shanghai Institute for International Strategic Studies, a government-backed think tank. "I predict that, given the current policy environment, the growth rate of military expenses will remain roughly on the same level as China's GDP growth in the next few years." (See pictures of China's infrastructure boom...
Scientists still don't know exactly how rogue waves occur, nor do they know how to predict them. Open ocean waves, possibly including rogue waves, form when wind produces distortion over the surface of the sea - the stronger the wind, the higher the wave, which is why hurricanes can create such destructive walls of water. Tsunamis, on the other hand, like the one produced by the 8.8-magnitude earthquake in coastal Chile on Feb. 27, don't create rogue waves; tsunamis barely make a ripple on the open ocean and gather in size only when they reach shallow land near...
...small brass cones on the platform to mimic the effect of unexpected ocean eddies in the current. When they beamed microwaves at the platform, the scientists found that "hot spots" - the microwave equivalent of rogue waves - appeared up to 100 times more often than standard wave theory would predict. Those results indicate that rogue waves might be a lot more common than scientists had believed and could explain why so many large ships - as many as two a week - sink even in the absence of bad weather. One day we might even be able to predict when these earthquakes...