ScienceBlogs has a new feature where all the bloggers answer a question. Today's question:
"If you could cause one invention from the last hundred years never to have been made at all, which would it be, and why?"
Easy. Cold fusion. Don't get me wrong --- I think it's great that I can run my whole house off one little "Mr Fusion" unit. And we'd probably be facing problems from global warming if we were still pumping out CO2 like in the old days. But it's just too easy to turn cold fusion devices into bombs. I don't have to list all the destruction that terrorists have caused with them.
More like this
The Powers That Be at Seed/ ScienceBlogs are initiating a new feature, cleverly called "Ask a ScienceBlogger," in which they will pose one question a week to the group of us, and we'll answer (or not) as we choose. The inaugural question was posted last night:
If you could cause one invention from…
Last week, we at the Seed mother-ship taxed the collective brain-power of the ScienceBloggers with the following question:
If you could cause one invention from the last hundred years never to have been made at all, which would it be, and why?
Their responses have swooped from the sublime to the…
"Almost every way we make electricity today, except for the emerging renewables and nuclear, puts out CO2. And so, what we're going to have to do at a global scale, is create a new system. And so, we need energy miracles." -Bill Gates
Energy is one of the most important topics facing our modern,…
As Janet and RPM have noted, the mothership has initiated an "Ask A ScienceBlogger" feature - a weekly question that us SBers will (briefly) tackle. This week the question is "if you could cause one invention from the last hundred years never to have been made at all, which would it be, and why?"…
What? "Cold fusion"? There is no such thing.
Is this a joke?
Haha
Well, the scientific consensus is that there is no such thing, but by [Brignell's Law](http://timlambert.org/2005/06/brignell4/), that means it's real. So there.
now look what you've done! your wish was granted!
Must be the new version of Movable Type. I'll put in a bug report.
What? "Cold fusion"? There is no such thing. Is this a joke?
It isn't if it needs to be explained to you.
It's a shame you couldn't answer the question seriously.
I'm thinking the lambada. That, after all, is the forbidden dance.
The 200 mpg carburetor, the suppression of which has caused so much covert assassination and regime change by the International Oil Cartel.
After thinking about this for a while, and setting aside even the good jokes, the question points out a fundamental problem with technology in general: the more wonderful it is, the more it allows you to consume. Even a completely limitless, non-polluting energy source would make it easier to bulldoze, pave, pump out, overfish, and otherwise destroy resources. And every tool is a weapon.
That's part of why simple conservation, the act of not consuming every bit that you can reach, becomes so important.
Now if I could only figure out some way to encourage it . . .
Reminds me of an old joke.
It's a shame you couldn't answer the question seriously.
It's a shame they could not ask a serious question!
If you could cause one invention from the last hundred years never to have been made at all, which would it be?
Computers.
Why?
This comment thread. At least CO2 disperses.
Incidentally, why don't ScienceBlogs allow superscripts and subscripts?
Jade asks:
What -- you want to enter something like, oh, I don't know, "CO2", and have it come out right? You commenters are so demanding!
I contacted Seed, and Tim Murtaugh[1] fixed it right away.
[1] All hail our Seed overlords!
I'm thinking the lambada. That, after all, is the forbidden dance.
Well at least it wasn't your fellow contrymen who came up with the damn thing. And I'd guess no one of the readers had to stand two years of it blasting from every sound apparatus virtually every day, and a slightly shorter time when it was the only soundtrack and dance in every party.
You guys should be glad that pagode or axé never made it to the US of A.