Excellent. Thank you!

"I think the problem has been that many people in the past assumed straight line increases in energy that just were not/are not possible."

Couldn't agree more. You're probably familiar with Pielke's work on the energy conundrum as well as Kevin Bullis' pieces in Technology Review on the need for big breakthroughs. Not…

My apologies if I was putting words in your mouth - certainly that was not my intention and clearly I misapprehended what you were trying to convey.

I do take your point, and agree that in the 50s-60s there were many unrealistic assumptions about how easy it would be to develop fusion and other non-fossil energy…

Very astute post, Dwayne. To the extent that the Apollo program was a critical early innovation pathway for miniaturization (including getting the costs down & quality/speed up for the microprocessor), somehow innovation in transportation has made only small, incremental improvements. I think you're right that a big…

Or, possibly, space solar power, which would not take up much land area but would still have some unknown carbon/water footprint to produce the thin-film PV.

The following sentence appears to be a typo:

Why no memory upgrade from 16/32/64 to 32/64/128? That would make a big difference to lots of users.

Whatsa matter, got your feelings hurt?

Don't try to confuse them with facts. They don't work on them.

What would a huge lump of buckyball look like, anyway?

George Lucas is the inventor of the Jedi Mind Trick. Good to see he still has that old magic.

Yes, I have read Zubrin. Have you read Wingo? How about Spudis? Zubrin is at this point more of an entertainer than an engineer; his dreams are unrealistic politically and technically. He says we can do this with existing technology - wrong. Closed-loop life support, radiation shielding, the physiological effects of…

Your post gets some critical facts wrong, so it's actually a great example of how a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

deGrasse Tyson is transparent about the data behind the presentation, so it's good that you're being honest in your self-assessment as clearly you didn't understand what he was saying.

Wrong on many counts. Let's start with an easy one. NASA didn't invent either Tang or Velcro. Those already existed, and NASA simply used them in the space program. What Apollo-era NASA funding did spark was research and innovation into integrated circuits which led to the cycle of exponential miniaturization that led…

Excellent question, and a lapse of good writing on the part of io9 for not telling people where to find it.

Thank you, etwarrior. Lakedesire, I admire your good intentions but suggest that it is indeed misplaced "word policing".

If you're being ironic, ok. If you're serious, then your comment is completely fatuous. Some cultural traditions must give way to new realities unforeseen before the world had 7 billion going on 12 billion people who all aspire to American standards of living. Widespread swidden agriculture is another example of a…

He gets almost everything right except the assumption / assertion that viruses are "nanotechnology". Since viruses are indeed "nano", and they are "technology" in the extended metaphorical sense that nature is capable of creating "technological" solutions to problems, perhaps he's being ironic?

So I'm NOT crazy! This is definitely a problem on my new 4S. It temporarily fixes itself if you turn the phone off and then back on, but will start doing it again within 2 to 3 calls.