tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-83164712012-01-18T04:39:40.183-05:00Imagine how people in 2050 will look back at our lives today...Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.comBlogger541100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1160483624684035822006-10-10T08:31:00.000-04:002006-10-10T08:33:44.710-04:00

A fun/interesting read:Miracles you'll see in the next 50 years (written in 1950)

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1140798887589198402006-09-01T01:34:00.000-04:002006-10-10T08:49:11.116-04:00

You open the newspaper and yet another apartment building has burned to the ground. The cause of the fire? A candle.Fire is one of man's earliest technologies. But today the idea of an open flame is sad. An open flame is an open invitation for problems, whether it is a candle, a burning cigarette or a log burning in the fireplace, it is a problem waiting to happen. Because the cat jumps up on the

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1138716726235494502006-01-31T05:55:00.000-05:002006-01-31T09:31:43.113-05:00

I was on a bike ride this weekend. I was sitting at an intersection waiting for the light to turn green. As I was waiting, a big fire truck turned into the road to my left and started heading toward the intersection with its siren wailing and all the lights flashing. As the fire truck approached it got louder and louder. It became so loud that I reached up to hold my ears. The amount of noise

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1136195162307605992006-01-02T04:39:00.000-05:002006-01-02T04:54:27.813-05:00

In the 21st century, the whole idea of "guns" and "gunpowder" seems incredibly sad. Let's ignore "hunting" because there just are not that many people who officially hunt any more. Today a gun is used to do one of two things:To stop someone when that someone does something that you do not like (aka murder)To stop a group of people when they do something that you do not like (aka war)You can make

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com26tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1124709178479028802005-08-22T06:06:00.000-04:002005-10-23T21:55:26.636-04:00

I found that there were a number of things that were difficult to discuss here on SadTech because, to discuss them, I needed to lay out the technological platform that would underpin them all. For example, what do I think will happen with transportation in the future? What will happen with porn? What happens with healthcare? At the core, all of these questions center on the nature of the human

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com24tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1123671975739672062005-08-10T05:02:00.000-04:002005-08-10T22:38:17.466-04:00

Think about how sad our current telephone system is:When you pick up the phone you get a dial tone. You dial in a totally arbitrary number. And which number do you dial? The person's home? Office? Cell? The phone at the other end rings. If it is plugged in, the phone will ring even if it is 3AM and you are sound asleep. Even if it is a wrong number, it rings. If the person is not there, you get a

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1122294354935835642005-07-25T06:25:00.000-04:002005-07-25T09:51:07.266-04:00

This weekend we bought Leigh a new laptop. It's your basic inexpensive laptop from HP. From a hardware perspective, it is pretty amazing what you can get in a laptop for $650 these days: a fast processor, lots of RAM, a big hard disk, high-speed wireless networking, a nice screen, a DVD-RW drive, etc. Plus it comes with a hardware warrantee, including 14-days "if anything goes wrong" protection

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1121562555072486662005-07-16T18:00:00.000-04:002005-07-17T06:32:03.233-04:00

This weekend is a typical weekend in the Brain household, and a good part of it is spent cleaning. "Cleaning" means sweeping and mopping the floors; scrubbing the bathrooms; vacuuming the carpets; helping the kids put away their puzzles, games, train sets, dinosaurs, dolls, cars, trucks, etc.; changing the linens; and generally straightening. Then you add to that the normal daily cleaning chores

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1120037693402047332005-06-29T01:23:00.000-04:002005-06-29T05:34:53.410-04:00

If there is one thing that people in 2050 will be laughing out loud at, it is internal combustion engines -- the kind of engines we find now in everything from automobiles to lawn mowers. The reason why they will laugh at them is because they are so very, very sad. Think about how sad they are:The most glaring problem is the waste. Something like 80% of the fuel that goes into an internal

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1119221908628342292005-06-19T18:47:00.000-04:002005-06-19T21:32:20.726-04:00

This weekend I got to see Revenge of the Sith in a theater. There were two scenes that struck me as particularly anachronistic -- the two that involved glass. In one scene, a group of Jedi knights come to the chancellor's office to arrest him. In the office there is a huge floor-to-ceiling panoramic window. It is made of glass. One touch with a light saber and the entire thing completely shatters

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1118654259793327382005-06-13T05:17:00.000-04:002005-06-13T07:18:35.650-04:00

Here is a letter that I received from Microsoft recently:Click for larger imageThink about how sad this is. We live in one of the most technologically advanced civilizations on earth. And the letter comes from what should be one of the most technologically advanced companies on earth. And yet...The letter is addressed to Kris Bram rather than Marshall Brain. What does that mean? It could mean

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1117684747686940672005-06-04T23:58:00.000-04:002005-06-05T06:25:14.636-04:00

Here is a description of the airbag system in my wife's car:The new Grand Caravan's structure is designed for maximum occupant protection, and safety is enhanced by standard front multistage advanced airbags, a driver-side knee blocker, the Occupant Classification System, which determines passenger-side airbag force depending on passenger weight, and available three-row side curtain airbags.There

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1117993167583643362005-06-04T01:23:00.000-04:002005-06-05T13:39:27.590-04:00

Today in the United States we consume crude oil as though it were water. Our most obvious use of crude oil comes when we pump gasoline into our cars, but we burn petroleum in a hundred other ways as well. For example, every product we buy is transported by truck, train, plane or ship -- all of which burn petroleum products. All of our food is farmed with tractors that burn petroleum. And so on.

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1116963603495523892005-05-25T04:40:00.000-04:002005-05-26T03:20:21.583-04:00

This is a very funny article, and it also points out a number of holes in current video games: A Gamers' Manifesto. Basically you can see that it is a long SadTech rant about video games. The lack of real AI is sad, and it does not sound like it is going to get much better in the future. The under-use of the hard drive and the long load times are sad. And so on.But he leaves out one essential

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1116663198608999802005-05-21T04:01:00.000-04:002005-05-21T21:05:08.790-04:00

If you look at SadTech posts like the ones on farming or cash or locks and keys, you can easily see why these technologies are about to be replaced by something new. The problem is that these technologies each have a huge list of disadvantages. For example, farming as we know it today has big problems with the weather, seasonality of crops, insects, weeds, pollination and so on. As soon as we can

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1116310405650971922005-05-17T02:13:00.000-04:002005-05-17T04:28:42.516-04:00

We all know that, especially as kids, the whole idea of going to the doctor to get stuck with a needle is uncomfortable. One of my kids has to get a shot every day, and it is a problem every day. People simply do not like pain. So why do we have to get shots? Why can't we take everything as a pill? It is because certain medicines cannot survive the acid in the stomach. Insulin is one of those

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1116167247350759312005-05-15T10:26:00.000-04:002005-05-15T12:18:09.460-04:00

With Episode 3 about to come out, I decided to re-watch the existing library of Star Wars films to get myself "Mentally Prepared." I was absolutely amazed at the number of anachronisms in the original Star Wars movie, and wrote them up in Watching Star Wars 28 years later.I am not talking about the obvious things like "space ships make no noise in a vacuum." People have been talking about stuff

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1115947691088220972005-05-12T21:17:00.000-04:002005-05-14T04:47:52.153-04:00

So... My wife has a new car, and it has three buttons on the center console that you can program to open and close the garage door. These buttons are called "HomeLink". I would like to program them. So I dig around in the glove compartment and find the owner's manual [note to self -- paper owner's manuals are sad]. Here are the steps that you take to program one of these buttons, according to the

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1115778790312094552005-05-10T22:19:00.000-04:002005-05-10T22:33:10.393-04:00

A fascinating 8-minute movie:EPIC

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1114769681013108952005-04-29T05:54:00.000-04:002005-04-29T06:57:19.243-04:00

I had big computer hardware problems this week (unreliability is working overtime), so I had to pull my desktop machine out from under the desk to repair it. Here is the scene that greeted me after I removed it: You can't help but notice the wires - the huge jumble of wires leading to and from the computer. Why are there so many wires? Here's an inventory of the wires and cables hooking to my

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1114400184651727242005-04-24T23:21:00.000-04:002005-04-26T05:29:28.900-04:00

I gave a presentation on robots this weekend, and in the presentation I used one of my favorite slides. The point of the slide is to say, "look at how much can change in just 25 years."The slide has on it two images. Here is image #1:Here is image #2:The first image is from the game Pacman, released in 1980. At the time it was considered to be an innovative video game.The second image is

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1114378051215133662005-04-23T15:33:00.000-04:002005-04-24T17:36:05.900-04:00

As part of a remodeling project, I had the opportunity to help tear out the interior walls in a hundred-year-old house. You take a hammer and start by whacking through the plaster. There's about a dozen layers of paint, and then the plaster has hair and all kinds of other stuff mixed in. The plaster was slathered on wooden lath strips. So you strip out all the paint, plaster and lath and throw it

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1113647591005296982005-04-16T06:27:00.000-04:002005-04-18T11:07:32.873-04:00

For millions of years humans and our evolutionary ancestors have relied on plants and meat for our sustenance. At first we did the hunter/gather thing, and then we invented farming. Farming has been with us for thousands of years as one of mankind's earliest innovations. It is safe to say that, within 50 years or so, farming as we know it today will be completely eliminated. Just think about how

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1113615318844853372005-04-15T21:35:00.000-04:002005-04-16T11:11:50.726-04:00

Since today is tax day, it is only appropriate to mention how Byzantine, archaic and sad the system of tax preparation is in the United States. This article says it all:Americans Spend 6.6 Billion Hours on TaxesFrom the article:People scurrying to meet tonight's tax deadline might consider this: It's taking you and your fellow Americans 6.6 billion hours to do all that paperwork. The basic tax

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1113643726852116822005-04-14T05:27:00.000-04:002005-04-16T05:28:46.853-04:00

Receipts are like cash -- very anachronistic and very sad in a modern society. Just look at a receipt and you can see how ridiculous it is:A receipt is a little scrap of completely non-standardized paper. Even worse -- I paid for these two chocolate sundaes with a credit card. Why in the world did the record of this transaction not get transferred electronically to the credit card company, which

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1113642309248567922005-04-13T05:01:00.000-04:002005-04-17T22:10:20.730-04:00

Cash is so obviously sad in today's world that there in no need to spend much time on it. The idea that we would use little bits of metal and little scraps of paper to represent value in the 21st century is an obvious anachronism going back thousands of years. But, for the fun of it, let's list some of the disadvantages of cash:Cash is easy to loseCash is easily stolenCash burns up in a fireCash

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1113143021172937762005-04-10T10:00:00.000-04:002005-04-10T10:31:52.896-04:00

Friday night I was driving in the dark to pick my mother up at the airport. There were a dozen things I needed to be doing -- books to read, reports to write, taxes to compute (april 15th is only a week away) and so on. But I could not do any of those things while driving. It struck me for the millionth time just how ridiculous driving is. I never feel more like a monkey than when I am driving a

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1112952925795486592005-04-08T05:27:00.000-04:002005-04-08T09:56:06.090-04:00

This morning I tried to post something to Blogger (the service that makes it possible for me to edit and publish SadTech). However, every time I tried to pull up Blogger, I would get this screen:Blogger, apparently, is dead. It has been unreliable for about the last two months -- long delays, flakey behavior, database problems, etc. But maybe it is not Blogger that is the problem. Maybe the

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1112951998567177382005-04-01T05:19:00.000-05:002005-04-10T10:39:02.983-04:00

I had one of my hard disks fail over the weekend. When you open it up and look inside, you can see why -- a hard disc has lots of high-speed moving parts. There are the disks spinning at 7,200 RPM. There is the little read/write head flying over the disks just waiting to crash. There's the aluminum arm shuttling the read/write head across the disks to find the different tracks. It's amazing that

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1112188363847669412005-03-24T06:58:00.000-05:002005-03-30T08:12:43.850-05:00

We were walking to the bus stop this morning and David (age 7) was all excited about summer vacation. He was talking about all the things he plans to do this summer.Summer vacation is a great example of inertia in society. Why do we have summer vacation? According to legend, it had to do with farming. If you look back a hundred years ago, the majority of people in the U.S. worked on farms.

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1111398870390103732005-03-21T04:47:00.000-05:002005-03-22T10:03:57.880-05:00

I'd like you to think for a moment about just how widespread obesity is. According to the American Obesity Association, "Approximately 127 million adults in the U.S. are overweight, 60 million obese, and 9 million severely obese." In other words, about half of all adults in the U.S. are overweight, and about a quarter of all Americans are obese.The U.S. Centers for Disease Control notes that the

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com32tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1116212983026877982005-03-19T10:58:00.000-05:002005-05-15T23:16:24.830-04:00

Right now we are in the process of taking our old negatives to the photo shop and having them transferred onto photo CDs. In other words, we are taking the pictures from one physical medium (film) to another (CD).Once we have the photo CDs, however, we will copy the photos to the network. From there on we will never have to deal with physical media again. Once they are on the network, we are done

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1116188179047868832005-03-12T16:14:00.000-05:002005-05-15T16:16:55.590-04:00

Think about all of the things in your life that have buttons:Your cell phoneThe radio in your car, along with the dashboardYour microwave ovenYour camcorder and digital cameraAnd so on...Anything electronic has bottons -- sometimes lots and lots of buttons.All of these buttons will begin going away within the next 10 years, replaced by a speech interface. You will speak rather than pressing

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1110418344694014122005-03-06T19:55:00.000-05:002005-03-10T03:13:29.520-05:00

In today's installment of the Cathy comic strip, Cathy Guisewite hits the nail on the head when it comes to Realtors (you can see today's strip here). She points out that the Internet has completely altered the landscape when it comes to buying a house: The Internet now:Allows anyone to view all of the houses currently available for sale online (including specs, photos and often video tours)

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1110103376757661942005-03-02T05:00:00.000-05:002005-03-06T05:06:53.873-05:00

As I mentioned in the previous post on phone books, I received 15 pounds of phone books on Sunday. I was therefore extremely surprised to open my door this afternoon to find another yellow bag of phone books on the front porch. This bag contained four phone books instead of five, so I am now the proud owner of 26 pounds of paper:All of it will end up in the recycle bin.The term profligate waste

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1109523936365061782005-02-27T12:02:00.000-05:002005-02-27T15:20:20.010-05:00

I opened my front door this morning and found this sitting on the front porch:When I picked up the sack my first thought was, "Good grief, How much does this weigh???" Putting it on the scale, I found it weighing 15.2 pounds (imagine a 5-pound bag of sugar, plus a 5-pound bag of flour, plus a 5-pound bag of potatoes). When I opened the bag, here is what was inside -- five phone books:From bottom

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com74tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1109158198563455022005-02-23T06:06:00.000-05:002005-02-23T07:13:21.306-05:00

You are looking at a sales circular in the Sunday paper when you see a real deal. It might be a laptop for $500 or a DVD burner for $50. But then you read the fine print and you realize that the laptop's price is really $900. The $500 price is what you pay after you apply for three different mail-in rebates. As you read the fine print, what you hear in the back of your head is a primal "ug". This

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1108979972218530292005-02-21T04:39:00.000-05:002005-02-21T06:40:29.273-05:00

My family went on vacation last week. Let's say that I would like to share highlights of my vacation with you in a 10-minute video. If I want to share snapshots with you, the technology that we have today makes it pretty easy -- almost trivial. Video, on the other hand, is incredibly hard today. Here are the steps that I would have to go through (let's call this the "normal process"):I would

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1108596905228786212005-02-18T03:15:00.000-05:002005-02-18T09:42:48.413-05:00

It was not so long ago that the human population was routinely decimated by disease. We think of things like plague epidemics, smallpox epidemics and cholera epidemics with a combination of dismay ("How could it possibly have been so bad???") and relief ("Thank goodness we figured out how to eliminate most of these problems!!!"). One thing that triggered many of these problems was the rise of

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1108571722490917532005-02-16T11:33:00.000-05:002005-02-16T17:15:47.100-05:00

I got on an elevator today. I was the only one on the elevator, but the buttons had been pushed for every floor. Since I didn't want to stop on every floor going up, I ended up getting off and waiting for another elevator.Let's assume that the elevator spent 30 seconds stopping on each floor. That elevator was out of commission for 10 minutes doing something totally useless. The reason for this

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1108445156127623762005-02-14T23:21:00.000-05:002005-02-15T07:04:00.583-05:00

Since today is Valentines Day, this seems like an appropriate topic. It is a bit delicate as topics go, but let's tackle it anyway. If you are a male who wants to control his fertility in the early years of the 21st century, you have only two choices. You can either:Go get a vasectomy, orUse a condom.The former is ridiculous -- sort of like cutting off your legs because you don't feel like

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1108082403316667932005-02-10T20:39:00.000-05:002005-02-11T04:15:55.876-05:00

We are getting ready to go to Disney World. We pack all the usual stuff -- clothes, shoes, diapers, a few books to read on the plane. But in this day and age we also need to think about the electronics. And we have to think hard about them, because it's not just one or two things anymore. Here's what we are planning to take:Leigh's cell phoneMy cell phoneLeigh's digital cameraDavid's digital

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1107886827467948272005-02-09T01:20:00.000-05:002005-02-10T07:52:26.546-05:00

Think back to the conditions of a field hospital during the Civil War. You probably envision "doctors" working in shirt sleeves wielding bloody saws. They had no concept of germs, and didn't even bother washing their hands. The guys they operated on lay on old tables or bales of hay. There was no concept of a "sterile operating theater." Today we are of course appalled by this lack of hygiene.

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1107878488184045532005-02-08T06:43:00.000-05:002005-02-08T21:58:24.876-05:00

If there is one thing that will appall people in 2050, it is the notion of traffic. The traffic problems that we experience in the United States today are pathetic beyond belief. The traffic that you see in the photo to the right is normal morning rush-hour traffic on Interstate 40 in Raleigh, North Carolina. It really is called "Interstate 40", and it really is supposed to be an Interstate

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1107413284621884512005-02-03T01:37:00.000-05:002005-02-03T01:54:42.686-05:00

Imagine going to New York City with your spouse to visit a friend. Your friend is the ultimate sophisticated urbanite who knows the ins and outs of everything trendy in New York. You ask your friend, "Where is a nice place we can go to dinner tonight?" This is a simple request, and your friend is going to process it very naturally. He will ask you several questions. For example:What kind of

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1107318307403009362005-02-01T22:51:00.000-05:002005-02-01T23:38:49.426-05:00

Leigh and I have started doing our taxes, and that meant that I needed to go into an online account that I don't use very often. That, in turn, meant that I had to open up the "File of account IDs and passwords." Since I was in there I decided to count all the accounts. There are about 100 entries in the file. They include:Account IDs and passwords for different email accounts. Account IDs and

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1107970857116893932005-01-31T21:36:00.000-05:002005-02-11T17:49:38.176-05:00

This is the famous "inky finger" from the Iraqi elections:Dipping their fingers in ink was the technique used to prevent people from voting twice. Is it possible to get any more primitive than this?

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1107141182365281682005-01-30T21:54:00.000-05:002005-01-30T22:13:02.366-05:00

If there is one technology that is going to bring howls of laughter from people in the future, it is going to be the keyboard. Talk about sad! Since we use keyboards all day every day and take them completely for granted, it is hard for us to really see how primitive keybards are. But just think about it. You have a thought in your head. You have to emit that thought one letter at a time

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1106969572310293892005-01-28T22:03:00.000-05:002005-01-29T12:28:23.186-05:00

The next time that you walk up to the front door of your house, pay attention to what you have to do. You will reach into your pocket and grab a handful of keys (this is a major pain in the neck if you happen to be carrying a package, a bag of groceries or a small child). Then you will select one of the keys and stick it into a lock. Then you will turn the key to open the door. You've been doing

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1106827029115609282005-01-22T05:43:00.000-05:002005-01-28T23:37:40.366-05:00

The next time you go to the dentist to have your teeth cleaned, think about what is going on. You lie on your back with your mouth wide open. Seated next to you is a woman dressed like a space alien (goggles, face mask, rubber gloves, tyvek biohaz suit...)(OK, maybe no tyvek, but close) and she is wielding instruments of torture. She reaches into your mouth with a scraper and a little mirror and

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1106848793472438492005-01-18T01:57:00.000-05:002005-01-27T22:01:49.963-05:00

The next time that you are out and about, notice how many smokers you see. You will find them in their cars, walking down city streets, huddled outside businesses, etc. With tens of millions of smokers in the United States, smoking is ubiquitous. Despite how common smoking is today, you can easily imagine this scene in 2050:Grandkid: I saw a really old movie today, and the people in this movie

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1106835516271328832005-01-15T08:37:00.000-05:002005-01-28T23:41:52.700-05:00

Last week I had the chance to visit CES 2005. It is an amazing event, but you have to wonder how the grandkids are going to react to the idea of a "trade show." If you think about it, CES has a lot of problems:It is incredibly expensive to create a booth. The big ones cost millions of dollars and take up 10,000 square feet or so. Then you have to ship and assemble the booth, and take it down at

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1106825737199791952005-01-01T18:27:00.000-05:002005-01-28T23:50:11.276-05:00

Since today is "New Year's Day", just about everything is "closed". The malls are closed. Most retail stores are closed. Lots of Grocery stores, restaurants, theaters, libraries, post offices, museums, businesses... almost everything is closed. About the only thing open is the occasional convenience store and fast food restaurant. When you think about it, this is incredibly sad. We are talking

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316471.post-1106786786077986972005-01-01T07:45:00.000-05:002005-02-21T05:22:16.193-05:00

Have you ever talked with a senior citizen and heard the stories? Senior citizens love to tell about how they did things "way back when." For example, I know people who, when they were kids, lived in shacks, pulled their drinking water out of the well with a bucket, had an outhouse in the back yard and plowed the fields using a mule and a hand plow. These people are still alive and kicking -- it

Marshall Brainnoreply@blogger.com29