Rants & Raves
Burnt by the Sun
Once again, a few people are saying that photovoltaic cells are the future of electric power (View, Sterling, Wired 12.03). But everybody else knows that they are simply too costly. Surely microprocessors will get much cheaper in the next few years, but that's not a given for solar cells, which usually show only incremental improvements. The fact that there is a glut of silicon this year is irrelevant.
Right now, the total cost of solar cells is about 50 years' worth of the power they produce, partly due to the huge amount of power used in their manufacture. Do you think solar power is used at solar cell factories? Of course not, and they can have the cells at cost!
We would all like to see clean, renewable energy, but unless hoping can be used for power, we will just have to wait until the technology is developed.
Carl Spearow
Gilbert, Arizona
Over the Borderline
Bruce Schneier was right on (View, "America's Flimsy Fortress," Wired 12.03). The biggest problem al Qaeda caused for the US is one of psychology, and everyone's paying for it.
Mike Sklut
Northville, Michigan
I am sick and tired of every arrogant outsider criticizing the government's efforts to provide security against terrorists. It's really become monotonous. And, in Mr. Schneier's case, it's just laughable.
If you can't defend everything, he says, don't defend anything. "The air transportation system is only as secure as the least secure airport," he says, implying there's no difference between LAX and Omaha. "Everyone is treated as a suspect," he says, implying what, that life has been made too inconvenient for him? Too bad.
Mr. Schneier will have to calculate whether his increased convenience is worth the worry, every time he gets on a plane, that the man or woman sitting next to him is an al Qaeda thug who made it through his beefed-up foreign intelligence service and is armed with two hand grenades, two Bowie knives, and a 9-mm Beretta that made it on the plane because we followed his advice.
Michael Altfeld
Falls Church, Virginia
Wal-Mart Eats Crow
It looks like the giant has gone soft (View, "WalMart.com Faces the Music," Wired 12.03). I just downloaded Sheryl Crow's "Love Is a Good Thing" from Wal-Mart's music service, and the company didn't exercise its authority by removing the song's "[Children] kill each other with a gun they bought at Wal-Mart" lyric.
Seems like only yesterday it was calling for her to change or remove the offending lyric or it wouldn't stock her CD. Fortunately, she never capitulated.
But let's keep an eye on this song and others; the possibility it might quietly disappear "due to technical issues" is something I wouldn't put past Wal-Mart.
Patrick Leal
San Jose, California
Navigating the Googleplex
Thank you for passing around the Google interface like it was an unconscious 12th-grader at a keg party ("How Would You Redo the Google Interface?" Wired 12.03). Now leave it alone and never, ever touch it again.
No one goes to Google to watch an abundance of charts, graphs, and maps get vomited across their screen. No one goes to Google to see a randomly displayed State Department memo. And I'm sure the modem users out there would love waiting for all the new, sparkly graphics to load. The Google interface works because it's clear, to the point, and loads quickly, even on the slowest connections. If Edward Tufte likes it, then it's good enough for me.
Joseph Michael Rice
Athens, Georgia
I want the Joshua Davis version of the Google homepage. Anything less is the Dark Ages.
Wardell Louis Brown
Brandon, Florida
If Edward Tufte were dead, he'd be turning in his grave. In fact, he probably wishes he was after seeing his name even loosely associated with Joshua Davis' desecration of Google's interface. Davis forgot the fundamental tenet "form follows function" and instead embraced "clutter kills clarity."
Mike Padilla
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
The kudos from Garry Trudeau ("Googlemaniacs," Wired 12.03) are unintentionally ironic. If Trudeau had used a human research assistant, he might not have fallen for the hoax Web site that claimed President Bush has an IQ of 91 and therefore would not have been forced to make an embarrassing retraction.
Taras Wolansky
Jersey City, New Jersey
Eco-Trader
Drake Bennett's portrait of Patrick Moore ("Eco-Traitor," Wired 12.03) gave much space to Moore's practiced performance as a lobbyist and didn't paint enviros in a flattering light by comparison. Moore's excuses for supersizing consumption and resource manipulation reference the reality of human needs and wants. Will that angle look humanitarian in 50 years? Perhaps real environmentalists can offer more reasoned visions.
Moore appears to be basking in the glow of his Greenpeace years while cashing in as an industry mouthpiece, offering diversions and rationalizations.
Ken Thomas
New Farm, Australia
Beware of men with a 35-year-old PhD when they hold forth on things they know little about. Mr. Moore is one of the semi-credentialed people who make a good living from polluting corporations, promoting themselves as sensible environmentalists. He holds up his service with Greenpeace as if it carries with it a permanent stamp of scientific legitimacy. However, Greenpeace was never known for research. It performed daring stunts to raise awareness about environmental issues and publicized them well. This same talent for PR is what Moore brings to his industrial clients today.
While Moore derides "blindly technophobic" environmentalists, he ignores the excellent (but highly technical) work being done in the field. William McDonough and Michael Braungart's work as architects and engineers will change the way we manufacture, making the process less polluting and more profitable. These are not simplistic zealots with an antiscience agenda. Many forward thinkers are using technology to lighten our load on the earth while improving living standards for everybody here.
Michael O'Hara
Hudson, New York
I know where Patrick Moore is coming from - open minds in the environmental movement are rare. Years ago, I helped develop technology for storing solar energy in pine tree resin and helped build wooden homes that heat and cool themselves naturally, without pollution. You would think using nature to save the planet would be the holy grail for environmentalists, but we still get hostility because we are cutting down trees. It could change the world, but apparently our technology goes against the grain.
Michael Sykes
Wake Forest, North Carolina
Autobiography of a Big Mac
Don Tapscott's tracking system would offer consumers a complete biography of their meat (Start, "The Transparent Burger," Wired 12.03). Such a system would, in theory, raise awareness of the realities of meat production and thus hold producers to a higher standard. But could it really work on any significant scale in this country?
The problem is meatpackers' production method, which is designed for efficiency and nothing else. It's true that a supermarket T-bone steak could be traced to a single animal, but a pound of ground beef may contain meat from hundreds of cows (which is, in part, why the meat from one sick animal can lead to a recall of millions of pounds of beef). Consumers curious about their burger's origin would have a whopper of a research project on their hands.
Jonathan Fine
Portland, Oregon
Nice piece on technology for tracking beef, but your illustration lacks one thing: the price. Any ground beef manipulated by that much technology and reworking would probably hover around $30 per pound, and don't get me started about the cost of a steak. If you really think that the US cattle industry will do anything approaching this, you're sorely mistaken. Just look at how difficult implementing even basic sanitary industrial procedures was, because it cut into the all-holy bottom line. A $9 Big Mac? Sure - it's got a pedigree!
William Grewe-Mullins
Atlanta, Georgia
Some Like It Pirated
Lawrence Lessig brings forth some interesting points regarding the history of piracy in Big Media ("Some Like It Hot," Wired 12.03). But he misses an important distinction between the kind of piracy that jump-started the movie, music, radio, and cable TV industries, and the "new piracy" that emerges from P2P sharing and the digital computing world. The old piracy was analog; copies were good, but not exact, likenesses of the originals. Today, digital copies are indistinguishable from the originals. This is an essential difference and explains, for the most part, why the big media companies are shaking in their boots over Napster and its progeny, much more so than they ever worried about cover songs.
Jamie Forrest
Brooklyn, New York
Hot Stuff, Part Two
The article "How to Avoid a Heat-Seeking Missile" (Start, Wired 12.03) references three countermeasure technologies the Department of Homeland Security is considering to protect US commercial aircraft from shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles. The piece describes one of the technologies as "pyrotechnic chaff." It also reports "fireworks-like chaff won't stop newer missiles and at 2,500 degrees could start collateral fires on the ground."
The decoys that our company (a defense contractor) is proposing for this program are pyrophoric special material decoys. SMDs are not pyrotechnic devices. They generate heat by rapid oxidation and have been in use by the military since the 1990s.
The US Army, Navy, and Air Force are currently using SMDs in all of their advanced infrared decoy programs.
Ron Gates
President, Avisys
Austin, Texas
Not-So-Hot Stuff
You noted global warming as "expired" (Start, "Wired, Tired, Expired," Wired 12.03). Personally, I don't think you get more "wired" than a coming crisis that jeopardizes all of humanity. The only thing expired about global warming is the time we've wasted. Here's my list. Wired: brain cells; tired: fuel cells; expired: fossil fuels.
Scott Salyer
Bellingham, Washington
Reignited and It Feels So Good
Every so often I think about not renewing my subscription, especially after issues laden with, if not devoted to, product descriptions, Dutch architects, or partisan politics. However, subsequent issues always have something fascinating that pulls me back into your orbit. This time around, that would be "Eco-Traitor," "The War at Home," and "Mars on Earth," in addition to other bits here and there (Wired 12.03). When Wired decides to display its gems, it sets out only the most dazzling.
Christopher Glick
Tokushima, Japan
RU-486: Not for Brain Tumors Anymore?
I took mifepristone daily for three years in a clinical trial (Start, "Not Just for Abortion Anymore," Wired 12.03). It held my recurrent brain tumor stable for three years, and I have had no long-term effects, but the institutional review board decided it was no more effective than the placebo and closed the trial.
Unfortunately, the drug has been turned into a political pawn by antiabortion activists hoping to ban its use entirely. I am still trying to find a doctor who will prescribe it for me. The tumor has damaged the vision in my left eye, and I have some neuropathy from the two craniotomies I have endured.
Even aspirin is fatal if abused, yet you can buy it anywhere. I try to understand how, in a free country, zealots could make it impossible for me and thousands of others to use this drug responsibly. I would much rather take on the future risks of a safe, effective drug like mifepristone than brain radiation, another craniotomy, or electroshock therapy. Wouldn't you?
Anne McGinnis Breen
Oro Valley, Arizona
Next Story: START
