Escaping the Trunk

Yup. This is why I married him.

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Over the past several years, I have avoided blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and the like for one very simple reason:  I am very sure that there just is not a sufficient number of people in the world who actually care about what I am thinking or doing on a daily basis to justify the effort.  When I was much younger than I am today, my brother described the internet as follows:  “It’s just like tv, if there were millions of channels but almost all of them were static.”  Do I want to become one more channel of static?  Not really.  But once in a while I do feel the need to say something, and I do wish that I had a platform on which to say it.  So, just this once, I have asked my lovely wife to post this minor rant on my behalf.

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Since writing more SF, I pay more attention to science. Doing so allows me to examine global conflict and development from another angle, one more intimately connected to reason and research than strained appeals ethics that we are all only presumed to share. My interest in and appreciation for the field consequently makes me twice as baffled and frustrated when I hear about utter wastes of time, effort, and resources like the Anti-Mosquito Laser.

Now, astrophysicist Jordin Kare from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Wood, Myhrvold, and other experts have developed a handheld laser that can locate individual mosquitoes and kill them one by one. The developers hope that the technology might be used to create a laser barrier around a house or village that could kill or blind the insects. Alternatively, flying drones equipped with anti-mosquito lasers could track the insects with radar and then sweep the sky with the laser.

The researchers are tuning the strength of the laser so that it kills mosquitoes without harming other insects or, especially, people. The system can even distinguish between males and females by the frequency of their wing movements, which may be important since only females spread the parasite.

Now, I’m all for lasers. I’m married to Death Ray, after all. But this? This is a waste. Bednets cost ten dollars a pop, kill mosquitos, and don’t require regular tech support. Lasers do. Lasers are delicate. They’re made of crystals and mirrors. They don’t like flying around in UAV’s. Why? Because even a tiny fracture can ruin a crystal’s ability to lase. Even a small misalignment of the mirrors can change the laser’s strength. If you want to set up these machines in remote locations, provide technical training — provide an education — to the end user. This alone will do more for ending the spread of disease than any expensive single-use device ever can. 

The science behind this is cool. Distinguishing wing movements? Protecting whole villages? Awesome. Wasting time and money on a single-use device which will require constant, specialized maintenance in an area which might almost never receive it? Not.

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“Seriously, can the kids just solve the mystery of the fucking ghost car, already, so that Scooby-Doo can get some Scooby snacks and we can all go home? I mean, usually, I’d deal with it for the length of a short story. But no. It rambles on for SIXTY PAGES.”*

…Mr. “Death Ray” Ashby assures me that the writer of this particular story is deceased, and thus can’t be angry with me for posting this rant. But you can see now why he has avoided blogging, thus far. Hidden beneath his rather taciturn Canadian exterior is a heart of pure ice.

“Just the thing the Internet needs,” he tells me, “yet one more person filling up space with long, bitter rants about the elements of popular culture that they don’t like.”

You see? He’s positively Snapely. It’s great.

*Technically, it’s only fifty-two. We checked. “God, it feels so much longer,” says Mr. Ashby.

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