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The ���ϳԹ��� Prognosticator: Psychic Swein: Yes! I See It!

Prognostications ’96

Last year was a mixed bag for Swein Macdonald, Scotland’s most famous psychic. In this space, he accurately predicted that Florida would be hit by a June hurricane and that wolves “will survive” in Yellowstone. Unfortunately, he also foresaw an American winner in the Tour de France–on his way to racking up, by our reckoning, a tepid accuracy average of .454. Worse, the
64-year-old suffered physical woes that eerily paralleled his psychic pratfalls: In an accident last August, Swein fell off a tractor, which rolled over him and broke both his arms. “Just one of those things,” he says in his thick Scottish brogue, “that happens in life.”

Well said. Such resilience is why our beefed-up list of 1996 prognostications–this year’s edition features plumb-bobs from two new seers who ply their trade in print and on TV–still has a place for the vermilion-cheeked one, who predicts good things for mankind as a whole and bad ones for Miguel Indurain and a certain Arkansas-bred Oval Officeholder.

• “Indurain will not repeat at the Tour de France. I see an accident–nothing serious, but it will take him out of the race.”
• “President Clinton won’t win the election. He’s finished. Nobody can trust him. That man Dole could be your next president…”
• “The Loch Ness Monster is very much alive. There will be three good viewings in ’96.”
• “A British athlete or a Japanese athlete is going to be sent home for drug use in the Olympics–or maybe the Chinese. Not you Americans, though. You’ve done a good job lately!”
• “Parts of Africa will be dangerous. Seems like South Africa. Some Americans are going to disappear, but it looks like…water problems, not politics. Yes! I see it: A few Americans are going to disappear because of crocodiles.”