A Milestone!

A What? I Hear You Ask
    None of that metric nonsense here at BOOJUM!  Unless it's astronomy, where Conrad may relent a little.
     Milestones are occasionally encountered even today in the 21st Century.  In centuries long past, when people didn't possess GPS, a road atlas or even a Manchester A to Z Streetguide, a milestone with distances to destinations in miles at the roadside was the next best thing.
     Anyway, tonight marks the ONE HUNDREDTH blog here at BOOJUM!  Outside, in celebration, the local colliery band is rehearsing, bunting* is up, small children are being dangerous with sparklers and free tea laced with whisky is being handed out by glamourous young ladies in taffeta chemises ...


"The Diamond Age"
     I finished this yesterday and have been cogitating in the meantime.  It's by Neal Stephenson and is set in a world where nanotechnology has transformed everything from the bottom up, and I mean everything.  However, there's no mention of the technology ever going wrong - the dreaded "Grey Goo" scenario.  Not even a little bit wrong.  Not even a teeny, tiny, nano-sized wrong.  Now, Mr Stephenson wrote the book and he's entitled to put in and leave out whatever he pleases, but I feel the possibility of this near-magical resource going wrong would add a bit of frisson.
     Ah, what the heck.  Who is Conrad to criticise?  He hasn't written a best-seller**.

Actually a reasonable synthesis of the book

Surely You Jest, Mister Feynman!?
     Look up Richard Feynman on Google or Wikepedia, or, even better, go out and buy one of his books - "Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman" or "What Do You Care What Other People Think?"  This guy redefines the word "clever".  He proposed nanotechnology in 1959, decades before science fiction writers even got their minds around the concept.  He was also an engaging character and natural speaker, not at all stuffy or precious and definitely not what you expect a Nobel-winning scientist to be.
     He played a mean acoustic saucepan, too.

So - Tanks?
     Try this on for size:

It can still kill - by hardening your arteries

*"Bunting" is a proper word and not rude at all.

 

** YET!