Replies

1. NUCLEAR WEAPONS

>>>>>>ONE CAN make some sound arguments for nuclear power-medical radioisotopes are quite handy, while far-traveling spacecraft can barely function on anything less-but there is no reason for us to go on pretending that we need to fry entire chunks of continents. Not only are nuclear weapons technically clumsy, but they betray a blatant death wish better suited to al-Qaeda than a civilization....

Noone's disagreeing with him. THe problem is getting your enemies to put their nuclear weapons down next to your's. Also problematic is preventing Al-Quaida from reading a whole bunch of physics textbooks, stealing a lot of really cool stuff and just building their own versions.

Russia and the US are actually doing precisely what the author advocates. It just takes time, diplomacy and lots of money.

2. COAL-BASED POWER

I'm not really a fan of power rationing and $5/ gallon gasoline. The author should try this again with his mental faculties fully engaged.

3. THE INTERNAL-COMBUSTION ENGINE

I live 15 miles from work. I don't enjoy riding bicycles and my feet would soon become tired and sore. Thanks, but no thanks. Come back with a car that runs on mental rhythms and power plant that autogenerates electricity. The perpetual motion motor would actually make this possible. It has a drawback though, it's physically impossible.

4. INCANDESCENT LIGHT BULBS

>>>IN REALITY, these sad devices are "heat bulbs." Supposedly a lighting technology, they produce nine times more raw heat than they do illumination. The light they do give, admittedly, is still prettier than the eerie glow of compact fluorescents and light- emitting diodes. But it's still a far cry from the glories of natural daylight.

Plus there's the cost of light bulbs, their fragility, the replacement overhead, the vast waste of energy, glass, and tungsten, the goofy hassle of running air conditioners to do battle with the blazing heat of all these round little glass stoves...let's face it, these gizmos deserve to vanish.

They will be replaced by a superior technology, something cheap, cool, and precisely engineered, that emits visible wavelengths genuinely suited to a consumer's human eyeball. Our descendants will stare at those vacuum-shrouded wires as if they were whale-oil lanterns.

Sure, good point.

5. LAND MINES

His assessment makes sense in a world where the US has a 10 division army and the Chinese and Russians do likewise. Instead, the US has a 10 division army, the Russians have at least 120 divisions and the Chinese keep 27 million soldiers under arms full time.

Tell the US Infantry to attempt warfare without, mines, hand grenades and mortars and they will quickly become QUakers and claim conscientious objecter status. They'll object vehemently to having their a---- stomped.

6. MANNED SPACEFLIGHT

>>>>ONE HATES to see this dazzling technology go, but when one resolutely sets the romance aside, there's not a lot left.

WIlla Cather now upchucks in her grave. Manned spaceflight is integral to the future of mankind. We are explorers by nature. Not whining, negative defeatists.

7. PRISONS

>>>>>>IT'S RATHER out of style to suggest that people who transgress might be rehabilitated if treated decently.

This man has never seen the recidivism rate statistics for pedophiles or rapists.

>>>>>>>>Lose your American internal visa (formerly known as a "driver's license") and you soon find that merchants won't take your credit, that aircraft won't transport you,

I was not aware that either our retail or airline industries had received a beneficial IQ transplant. If it's true, it's excellent news.

8. COSMETIC IMPLANTS

Tell that to someone who just had their face ripped off in a motorcycle wreck. I used to think the same about cosmetic dentistry until a dentist doing a rotation in an emergency room described the importance of cosmetic dentistry to the psychiatry of badly mangled car wreck victims.

9. LIE DETECTORS

>>>>>THEY JUST plain don't work.

This, I'll buy into. Drugs and self-hypnotic techniques can defeat them.

10. DVDs

>>>>> Plus, just like CDs, DVDs as physical objects will prove to warp and delaminate.

Oh, so you can't just use them beer coasters. Damn!!

>>>>The Content Scrambling System copy protection scheme doesn't work,

Niether did the radar detection system being tested at Pearl Harbor in 1941. This fortunately did not get used as a reason to reprogram the funds for radar in the US Air Force.