Sunday, March 18, 2012

Don't Hold Your Breath Waiting for the Nanobots

Since I was at most a teenager, I've considered myself a futurist. Blame it on all the sci-fi I read. I can remember countless conversations, usually with my older brother, about "what happens next," including the conversation in 2007 in which we predicted the ubiquity of cloud computing and the app economy (we didn't quite predict tablets, being still smitten with netbooks, but we definitely foresaw the end of powerful personal computers). One of the most exciting trends I was anticipating back then was the end of industrial manufacturing.

Sunday, January 15, 2012

Artistry Across Media or My Three Favorite Film Adaptations

With The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey due out in theaters soon (er or later), a lot of fans are debating the merits and demerits of Peter Jackson's film adaptations of Tolkien's works - a debate with which I am intimately familiar, having argued the demerits frequently and fervently in my younger, more impassioned days. I'm not going to take up that argument again (I'm getting too old for this sort of thing), but I would like to reply to one of the most common rebuttals to arguments against the films.

Saturday, January 14, 2012

A point on political rhetoric

I really hate the cliche "A rising tide lifts all boats."

In economic terms, GDP growth does, in fact, provide a lot of opportunities all across the economy, but it's hardly the only economic goal worth pursuing. Specifically, the policies this cliche is often quoted to support are designed to favor yachts over dinghies.

Proposed Alternative: "A rising sea level will give some ocean-front property, and put others underwater."