I've made some embarrassingly silly misses, such as the booming popularity in America of Brazilian cars, or the advanced technology required for your car to have its own answering machine. But I also predicted the Internet, wall-sized TV/monitors, laptop and tablet computers, computer-aided forensics, and the massive acceptance of .40 caliber weapons.

One San Francisco weekend in the late 1970s, I was among a small handful of delegates (the names Feldman, White, and Grossberg come to mind) to the National Libertarian Party Convention made fun of by the late economist Professor Murray N. Rothbard for insisting that the subject of property rights—and the correlative responsibilities—in outer space needed mentioning in the National Libertarian Party platform. I knew Murray, who was often a short-sighted and toxic little man. He called us "space cadets" who were somehow damaging the dignity and believability of the Party with our irrelevant issue, and tried to laugh us off the National Platform Committee.