English - Author | May 9, 1945 -
The blunt tools of legislation or union power can force a corporation to pay higher wages, but if employees don't create an equal amount of additional value, there's no net gain.
Charles Platt
PowerValueToolsEmployeesCreate
Despite (or because of) a free public school system, millions of teenagers enter the work force without marketable skills. So why would anyone expect them to be well paid?
WorkSchoolFreeSkillsWhyWithout
If low-temperature fusion does exist and can be perfected, power generation could be decentralized. Each home could heat itself and produce its own electricity, probably using a form of water as fuel. Even automobiles might be cold-fusion powered.
HomePowerWaterGenerationHeat
Watching cold fusion is like watching water boil in slow motion. First, sufficient deuterium has to penetrate the palladium electrode. This can take a few weeks. Then, if excess heat is generated during the next month or two, accurate temperature readings require extreme precautions to exclude environmental effects.
WaterEnvironmentalColdSlowHeat
Even if major funding is obtained for cold fusion, conceivably the phenomenon could suffer from problems as intractable as those of hot fusion. It may never work reliably or generate enough energy to be commercially viable.
WorkColdEnergyProblemsEnough
The idea of an e-book has been around since the late 1970s, when researchers at Xerox PARC got on the case. Their prototype used millions of little magnetic particles, black on one side and white on the other, loosely embedded in the surface of a soft sheet of rubber.
BlackLateWhiteLittleSideUsed
In the early 1970s, phone phreaks manipulated the long-distance system using blue boxes that they built from sketchy photocopied schematics that were often riddled with errors. Not many had the skill to do this. Phreaking was restricted to a select few.
BlueEarlyPhoneSkillSystemBoxes
The public is eager for stories of True Cybercrime, and the media is happy to glamorize the subject. But when teenagers take the bait and live out our fantasies for us, we punish them for frightening us too much.
LiveHappyMediaToo MuchTrueOut
Our information network is much better protected than our railroad network, and someone who cracks a system is able to cause far less human damage than someone who derails a train. Why, then, has 'computer crime' caused so much hysteria? Perhaps because the public is so willing - eager, even - to be scared by bogeymen.
BetterSomeoneInformationTrainWhy
Scaremongering is an age-old political ritual. There are public officials who have benefited by playing up the 'hacker threat' so that they can win approval by cracking down on it.
WinPoliticalDownHackerUpWho
I've always resented the force of attraction that traps me here on Planet Earth. It makes me feel like a bug stuck to a piece of duct tape. Ever since my teenage years, when I used to read a lot of science fiction and took it much too seriously, I've dreamed of somehow reaching escape velocity. I am, you might say, anti-gravity.
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Misery is the stuff of comedy, if one can just live long enough to get over it.
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