Science Channel - Is This a Good Idea?

Floating Cities?

If you want to have some disturbing dreams tonight, check out this YouTube video. And I’m not just talking about the Eighties retro theme music by those mullet-coiffed lite-metal gods Night Ranger. 

No, what I’m obsessing about is the potential impact of coastal flooding from rising sea levels due to global warming. (By the way, for the handful of you climate-change skeptics out there who may get the urge to flood my email box with angry, hyper-detailed refutations, please instead refer to blogger Coby Beck’s excellent FAQ on the subject.) The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is pretty worried about the effects of rising sea levels on U.S. coastal areas, as this online briefing paper details. But other nations ought to be even more worried. Take a look at this 2007 report with the ominous title, "Ranking Port Cities with High Exposure and Vulnerability to Climate Extremes: Exposure Estimates," by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.  Here’s the upshot:

By the 2070s, total population exposed could grow more than threefold to around 150 million people due to the combined effects of climate change (sea-level rise and increased storminess), subsidence, population growth and urbanization. The asset exposure could grow even more dramatically, reaching US $35,000 billion by the 2070s; more than ten times current levels and rising to roughly 9% of projected global GDP in this period. On a global-scale, for both types of exposure, population growth, socio-economic growth and urbanization are the most important drivers of the overall increase in exposure. Climate change and subsidence significantly exacerbate this effect although the relative importance of these factors varies by location. Exposure rises most rapidly in developing countries, as development moves increasingly into areas of high and rising flood risk.

Indeed, the top two coastal metropolises on the endangered list are Calcutta and Mumbai in India, and of the remainder of the top 10, eight are also Asian cities. (Miami, Fla., in the U.S., which ranked ninth, was the only city from a developed nation on the list.)

Iron Man Suits, for Real?

I confess that I haven’t yet seen the box-office smash Iron Man, but when I was a kid, I was an avid fan of the Marvel comic book adventures of inventive industrialist Tony Stark and the powered armored suit that he used to battle the Crimson Dynamo, Titanium Man and other nefarious agents of the international communist conspiracy. (For millennials out there who may be puzzled by the last reference, this was back in the days of the Cold War, before the NHL was filled with Russian hockey players and the Chinese began manufacturing iPods and running shoes.) What scrawny pre-adolescent wouldn’t want to be incredibly strong, bulletproof and able to smash through walls without even breaking a sweat? It was a tantalizing fantasy. Judging from the movie’s $100 million opening gross, it still is.
But what about having one of those Iron Man suits for real? What we’re actually talking about is a powered exoskeleton, a mobile machine with a skeleton-like framework and a power source that augments — or even replaces — the biochemical processes of the human body to move its mechanized limbs. Since 2000, the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has been funding research to develop such devices. As a recent article in Popular Science reports:

DARPA’s ambitious wish list read like something from a comic: a machine that would let the average soldier lug hundreds of pounds and hike for days without fatigue, handle weapons that normally require two people, and whisk the injured off the battlefield by tossing one or two men on his back. They asked for the suit to support more armor, rendering men impervious to enemy fire. They even wanted it to make soldiers jump higher. They wanted Iron Man.

To that end, Sarcos Research Corporation, whose robotics operations were recently acquired by defense giant Raytheon, has created the XOS exoskeleton, whose capabilities you can see in this video:

In Japan, a company called Cyberdyne has developed the Robot Suit HAL-5, which it hopes to put into production later this year. Unlike with the XOS, HAL-5’s user doesn’t have to work controls; sensors pick up signals sent by the user’s brain to his or her muscles, and use them to direct the exoskeleton’ s mechanical limbs. Here’s a YouTube video of HAL-5 in action:

Besides creating a generation of military super-soldiers, powered exoskeletons could have a wide range of useful applications, such as enabling rescue workers to venture safely into burning buildings or toxic disaster sites. A company in Israel has developed an assistive exoskeleton called ReWalk that promises to allow paralyzed people to walk and perform other tasks.

That all sounds wonderful. But as any comics reader knows, powered exoskeletons have the potential to be used for enormous evil as well. A dictator backed by cyborg soldiers, for example, could easily crush any ordinary non-enhanced citizens who dared to oppose him. (Would the Second Amendment apply to Iron Man suits?) And if the technology got into the hands of criminals or terrorists, who knows what awful uses they might find for it? No wonder Tony Stark is such a tormented soul.

So, what do you think about unleashing powered exoskeletons? Express your opinion below.

RFID Tags Tracking Everything (Including You)?

What do graduate students, faculty and staff in the University of Washington’s computer-science and engineering department have in common with cases of air freshener at Wal-Mart? All are being tracked continuously, everywhere they go in the building, by Radio Frequency Identification tags.

In case you’ve been living in a cabin in a remote part of Montana for the past few years, RFID tags are electronic devices that store information and then transmit it whenever they pass within range of one of the receivers in a network. (That’s the simplistic explanation; for all the nuances, check out this RFID primer from HowStuffWorks.com.) RFID has been around for a while; the basic concept, in fact, dates to the “identification friend or foe” transponders developed to protect Allied airplanes from being shot down by their comrades on the ground during World War II. But RFID has mushroomed in recent years, as the devices have become progressively tinier — Japanese electronics manufacturer Hitachi has created “super micro” tags that measure just one-twentieth of a millimeter in length and width — and their applications have become increasingly sophisticated. 

Considering how easily we all misplace our stuff, and how much government and corporate bureaucracies relish the ability to verify who people are and access data on them with instantaneous ease, it’s probably not that surprising that RFID technology is rapidly becoming the 21st-century electronic equivalent of kudzu. RFID tags are showing up on everything from Levi's blue jeans on clothing store shelves to surgical sponges, in an effort to thwart their alarming tendency to remain inside operating-room patients. Retailers and banks clearly are enthralled with the notion of  a cash-free future in which consumers pay for purchases via RFID credit or debit cards, without even having to sign their names to a credit card slip (or even open their wallets, perhaps). The State Department puts them inside U.S. passports. RFID system maker Verichip markets a device that can be attached to newborn babies’ legs  in maternity wards, to avoid accidentally giving a mother the wrong infant. And here’s a YouTube clip in which former Bush administration Health and Human Services secretary and failed presidential aspirant Tommy Thompson, who for a time served on the board of Verichip’s parent company, even touts the advantages of having one of the company’s identification chips imbedded under your skin, in order to make it possible for emergency room doctors anywhere to access your medical records online.

But participants in the University of Washington’s RFID Ecosystem Project are taking the technology even further. They’re voluntarily carrying personal RFID devices that allow them to be tracked by 200 receivers scattered throughout the school’s computer-science building (with the exception of a few off-limits spots, such as the restrooms), and to receive and exchange information as well. The system can track who goes where in the building and who meets with whom, data that the study participants themselves can access and use in a variety of ways. As this video illustrates, it’s possible for an impatient participant to see whether a colleague actually is on the way to a scheduled meeting, or to amass a precise log of all the casual hallway encounters that he or she has in the course of a week. It’s even possible to walk into a room, overhear music that another participant is listening to, and automatically capture a Weblink to the same MP3 file so you can download it later. Here’s a pretty good ZDNet article on the experiment.

Though the project demonstrates innovative uses of RFID, its real purpose is to predict and measure the impact of a future RFID-wired society upon the humans who’ll live in it. As the study’s FAQ explains:

Our hope is that the qualitative and quantitative data we collect in our user studies will help us to: 1) Acquire an in-depth understanding of the blaring privacy issues; 2) Uncover and study more subtle privacy issues; 3) Evaluate and iteratively improve the effectiveness of our feedback and control mechanisms, data privacy techniques, and methods for detection and prevention; and 4) Finally, to inform the wider community (including businesses and policy makers) of the privacy-utility trade-offs inherent in emerging RFID systems before such systems become commonplace.

But we may find out a lot sooner what an RFID culture looks like in reality. In China — which spends $5 billion a year on RFID technology, the most of any nation on the planet — the government is creating what in effect will be the world’s largest RFID network, a milieu in which a projected 900 million Chinese citizens will carry RFID-equipped, personal identity cards by the end of 2008. As the New York Times reported last year, scanning a card would give police officials access to an extensive amount of information on an individual:

… work history, educational background, religion, ethnicity, police record, medical insurance status and landlord’s phone number. Even personal reproductive history will be included, for enforcement of China’s controversial “one child” policy. Plans are being studied to add credit histories, subway travel payments and small purchases charged to the card.

It’s not too hard to imagine how the Chinese government might also utilize RFID to keep a billion people under what would amount to pervasive 24/7 scrutiny, especially if RFID data is synched with the massive video-surveillance networks being built in the high-tech metropolis of Shenzhen and other Chinese cities. But privacy advocates warn that our own government — or the private sector, for that matter — could someday be nearly as invasive. As the Electronic Privacy Center warns:

… the ability to track people, products, vehicles, and even currency would create an Orwellian world where law enforcement officials and nosy retailers could read the contents of a handbag — perhaps without a person's knowledge — simply by installing RFID readers nearby. Such a fear is not unfounded. Currently, some RFID readers have the capacity to read data transmitted by many different RFID tags. This means that if a person enters a store carrying several RFID tags — for example, in articles of clothing or cards carried in a wallet — one RFID reader can read the data emitted by all of the tags, and not simply the signal relayed by in-store products.

In the state of Washington, legislators were so aghast at the prospect of corporate RFID spying on consumers that they recently enacted a law barring the remote collection of personal data without prior consent. Other states are considering similar legislation, though it would take nationwide restrictions to really make a difference. So far, Congress seems a bit slow on the uptake.

But there are other, potentially devastating, RFID-related problems that might arise. Security experts have demonstrated how easy it would be for RFID identity hackers to clone the passports and other documents of unwitting travelers, or for terrorists to program a RFID-enabled explosive device that would wait for an American citizen to walk by before it went off.

And finally, there are those Biblically-minded naysayers who suggest that RFID tags may actually be the mark of the beast prophesied in the Book of Revelation.

No wonder that some people are so nervous about having the various RFID tags they carry around with them hacked that they’re resorting to wrapping them in signal-blocking aluminum foil, though those with more fashion sense are opting for metal-lined designer wallets. Dutch computer-science assistant professor Melanie Rieback, has come up with an even more technologically sophisticated countermeasure — the RFID Guardian, a portable battery-powered personal firewall with the ability to selectively block RFID receivers.

So, what do you think? Should we put aside our skepticism and privacy fears and eagerly embrace the ease and convenience of an RFID-enabled global culture? Or should we all stock up on aluminum foil? Express your opinion below.

Personal Jet Packs?

I’m hearing complaints that I tend to blog too much about bleak, scary hypothetical end of the world  scenarios.  As a result, I’m going to put aside my previously planned topic — the pros and cons of various strategies for dealing with a global onslaught of flesh-eating zombies — and instead focus on a subject that inspires a tad more bonhomie: The personal jet pack.

If your only familiarity with the personal jet pack comes from the James Bond flick Thunderball, in which Agent 007 relies upon the gadget to escape some pistol-wielding bad guys, you may be surprised to discover that the jet pack — or rocket belt, as it’s sometimes called — actually is a real, functioning technology that’s been around for more than 60 years. During World War II, German scientists developed the Himmelstürmer (in English, “sky stormer”), a pair of what essentially were miniature V1 missiles  attached to a harness. The device was designed to enable Wehrmacht combat engineers to leapfrog distances of up to 75 yards over minefields, barbed wire and bombed-out bridges. A prototype was captured by U.S. forces and sent back home for study. After the war, the Pentagon wanted to develop a more powerful version, which it dubbed the Small Rocket Lift Device, for use in reconnaissance and amphibious landings.

The first functional personal flying device was the Bell Rocket Belt, invented by engineer Wendell F. Moore in the 1950s and early 1960s, which used nitrogen and highly concentrated hydrogen peroxide to power twin jet nozzles that sprouted from behind the wearer’s shoulders like angel wings. In 1961, a week after Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin first orbited Earth, an extremely brave individual named Harold Graham made the first unassisted jet-pack flight at an airport near Niagara Falls. He reached an altitude of just 4 feet and traveled about 30 yards, but it was a start. Eventually, Graham managed to elevate to a height of 30 feet and cover slightly more than the length of a football field. That year, he gave a demonstration for President John F. Kennedy at Fort Bragg in North Carolina.

Nevertheless, the military was underwhelmed by the original Rocket Belt, because it had one severe limitation: users could only stay in the air for a maximum of 21 seconds. In the late 1960s, the Pentagon took another stab at the concept, investing $30 million to develop Bell’s Individual Mobility System, which employed a gas-turbine jet engine powered by kerosene fuel. The IMS could stay aloft for 20 minutes and cover much larger distances than the Rocket Belt, but it too had drawbacks. The system weighed a hefty 170 pounds and was loud enough to make it useless for surveillance. The project eventually became a victim of budget cuts.

From then on, other than the jet-pack pilot who made a spectacular landing at the opening ceremonies of the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles and an occasional appearance as a prop in science fiction movies, the concept was pretty much relegated to the dusty corner of oblivion occupied by the likes of the Amphibicar, the Dymaxion House and the Picturephone.

That is, until recently, when two companies — U.S.-based Jetpack International and a Mexican competitor, Tecnologia Aeroespacial Mexicana — began marketing personal flying devices to civilian thrill seekers who happen to have $150,000 or so to spend. Both are developing next-generation gadgets that promise to break through the previous time and distance limitations. According to a 2007 story in Popular Mechanics, Jetpack’s upcoming $200,000 T73 model, scheduled for release sometime in 2008, will burn jet fuel instead of using hydrogen peroxide, and will remain aloft for 19 minutes with an 11-mile travel range. Meanwhile, TAM is working to develop its own Jet Belt, whose single titanium jet engine will be capable of delivering 490 pounds of thrust.

So will jet packing become the next hot extreme sport? As this YouTube video suggests, it must be incredible fun. The downside: As the manufacturers readily admit, personal flying devices are pretty dangerous and require lots of careful training. Is the prospect of a careless adrenaline junkie running out of fuel and plummeting to Earth — or crash-landing on the roof of your house — simply too great of a risk? Express your opinion below.

Should the Pentagon Develop a Telepathic Ray Gun?

I know some of you may not want to believe this, but the U.S. government may well already have the ability to beam secret commands to you through the fillings in your teeth. Well, not exactly. But close.

A recently declassified 1998 U.S. Army report, “Bioeffects of Selected Nonlethal Weapons,” describes government plans for a microwave weapon that would transmit voice communication that seems to emanate from within a human target’s own brain. (It was obtained and posted on the Web by Freedom From Covert Harassment & Surveillance, a Cincinnati-based organization that advocates on behalf of people who believe they are being stalked and subjected to “electromagnetic harassment.”)

To quote the report:

Because the frequency of the sound heard is dependent upon the pulse characteristics of the RF energy, it seems possible that this technology could be developed to the point where words could be transmitted to be heard like the spoken word, except that it could only be heard within a person’s head.

This is possible because of something called the Microwave Auditory Effect, which was first discovered during World War II, when people working in the vicinity of radar transponders complained of hearing strange clicking noises that other people nearby didn’t notice. The effect is caused by thermal expansion of the region around the cochlea. In the 1960s, neuroscientist Allan H. Frey, who was the first to publish research on the effect, was able to induce it in human subjects with pulsed microwaves from a transmitter 100 meters away.

It’s unclear just how far the government’s microwave auditory research and development efforts have progressed since 1993, when the report was written. Another sort of microwave weapon described in the report — the Active Denial System, which causes targets to experience an intense burning sensation on their skin without actual injury, has in fact been developed and may be deployed as soon as 2010. According to New Scientist, the first media outlet to disclose the declassified 1993 report, the U.S. Navy in recent years has funded research on a weapon that would use the Microwave Auditory Effect to disperse crowds.

While the 1993 report notes the technology’s potential as a method of transmitting secret messages, it puts more emphasis on how microwave transmission of words could be used as a nonlethal weapon:

It may be useful to provide a disruptive condition to a person not aware of the technology. Not only might it be disruptive to the sense of hearing, but it could be psychologically devastating if one suddenly heard  “voices within one’s head.”

Blasts from the telepathic ray gun essentially would simulate the auditory hallucinations experienced by people suffering from schizophrenia or mood disorders. As this article by Yale University psychiatry professor Ralph Hoffman explains, those illusions can be both excruciating and debilitating:

… Voices produce a stream of speech, often vulgar or derogatory (“You are a fat whore,” “Go to hell”) or a running commentary on one’s most private thoughts.

The compelling aura of reality about these experiences often produces distress and disrupts thought and behavior. The sound of the voice is sometimes that of a family member or someone from one’s past, or is like that of no known person but has distinct and immediately recognizable features (say, a deep, growling voice). Often certain actual external sounds, such as fans or running water, become transformed into perceived speech.

One patient described the recurrence of voices as akin to being “in a constant state of mental rape.” In the worst cases, voices command the listener to undertake destructive acts such as suicide or assault.

Provided that the technology could be developed to the point where transmissions could be beamed over long distances, microwave voice transmissions might be used on the battlefield to fill enemy soldiers’ heads with a disorienting stream of gibberish, or unnerve them with an authoritative-sounding voice telling them to surrender. But the telepathic ray gun might have even more potential for covert operations. Imagine being able to drive North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il into a state of incoherent delirium in front of his generals, weakening his grip on power. Or giving an unwitting Al Qaeda lieutenant mental orders to assassinate Osama bin Laden, in the fashion of The Manchurian Candidate.

Of course, the potential for abusing such a weapon is also immense. We’re talking hypothetical here, but what if a future U.S. president decides that it doesn’t fit the legal definition of torture and authorizes its use to break terrorism suspects? (Come to think of it, microwave telepathy would have been acceptable under the infamous 2002 memo that a Bush administration lawyer wrote to justify legally questionable interrogation methods used in Guantanamo and other, more secretive prisons.) What if the White House, in cahoots with the Pentagon, used it against political opponents of a war it wanted to wage?

So what do you think? Should the military develop a telepathic ray gun? Or, if it turns out that they’ve already developed such a weapon, should it ever be used? Offer your opinion below.

Driverless Cars?

When you get out on the freeway these days, it’s a bit unsettling to notice the number of drivers who are talking on their cell phones, eating, fixing their hair — and sometimes doing all of those things simultaneously. It’s almost as if actually driving the car is an unwanted distraction from the other stuff they’re doing, rather than the other way around. Such multitasking by drivers, of course, is extremely dangerous. One federally funded study found that the risk of a crash increases three-fold when a driver is dialing a cellphone, and that reaching for a moving object — such as a coffee mug or sandwich sliding across the dashboard — increases the likelihood of an accident by a factor of nine.

But the New York Times reports that U.S. automaker General Motors has come up with an interesting solution for the problem of distracted drivers: a car that drives itself.  GM is unveiling a prototype of a self-driving Chevy Tahoe SUV, developed with the help of Carnegie Mellon University robotics researchers.

Here are some pictures of  “Boss,” as the vehicle has been dubbed, winning the $2 million first prize in the Urban Challenge competition for robot cars sponsored by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The military is interested in autonomous unmanned ground vehicles that could someday venture into urban battlefields and maneuver around amid hostile fire. But GM spokesman Scott Fosgard told the Times that the company envisions Boss’ future production progeny, which could be in showrooms within a decade, as a civilian road warrior  that would “know where all the vehicles are around it, dramatically reduce accidents and even reduce congestion.”

As a story on All Headline News explains, most of the technology needed to create a functional driverless car — such as radar-based cruise control, motor sensors, lane change warnings, electronic stability control and satellite-based digital mapping — already is on the market. The trick, apparently, is getting them to work together without a human at the controls. As an Associated Press story on Newsvine notes, GM envisions linking driverless vehicles in a wireless network, which presumably would allow them to pass along data about road and traffic conditions to one another.  (The military is trying to build a similar network capacity for robotic attack vehicles that will roam the battlefields of the future.)

Car owners wouldn’t have to cede control unless they wanted to — one option would be to choose driverless mode on the Interstates, and then take the wheel themselves on local streets. But it’s not hard to imagine a lot of drivers turning the responsibilities totally over to the robot. That way, you can concentrate on texting, firing up that in-car espresso maker, or playing a little Mario Kart DS. Cool, huh?

Of course, that’s assuming you’re willing to trust your safety to a robotic chauffeur, one that operates totally without fear of crumpled bumpers, speeding tickets or getting his insurance canceled.  As this video clip demonstrates, some robots apparently have driving skills that are, well, roughly equivalent to those of teenagers.

So what do you think? Are driverless vehicles the way to ride in future style? Or should we leave the driving to humans? Express your opinion below.

Flying Cars

Imagine being able to get in your car and soar like George Jetson over the traffic jam on the highway, and then touch down at your destination in a fraction of  the time it normally takes to drive. Tantalizing, huh? Call it a flying car or a roadable aircraft, but either way, it’s an idea that’s been floating around — no pun intended — since aviation pioneer Waldo Waterman built the Aerobile, the first vehicle that demonstrated the ability to both drive and fly, in 1937.  (Two Aerobiles actually managed to successfully fly from California to Ohio, though a third had to turn around when it got to Arizona.) As the explosive growth of the suburbs in the 1950s increased commuting distances, Ford Motor Co. did a study and determined that not only could flying cars be manufactured economically, but that there was a lucrative potential market for them. However, the idea met stiff opposition from the Federal Aviation Administration, which envisioned tens of thousands of small aircraft wreaking havoc with the national air traffic control system. (It probably didn’t help that the AVE Mizar, an after-market cross between a Cessna Skymaster and a Ford Pinto, crashed in 1973, killing the pilot and the vehicle’s developer.)

Nevertheless, the idea of putting automobiles in the air refuses to go away. There’s an online publication, Roadable Times, devoted to the subject, and in recent years, more than a half dozen companies have developed designs and scale models for flying cars. Moller International has tested a prototype of its rotary engine-powered, vertical-takeoff Moller M400 Skycar, though so far only while attached to a safety tether that the company says is required by its insurance carrier. Meanwhile, Woburn, Mass.-based Terrafugia has flown a one-fifth scale model of the Transition, a small aircraft designed to fold its wings and drive off an airport runway onto the highway. Such a roadable aircraft might fit into the concept of Personal Air Vehicles envisioned by a 2003 National Aeronautics and Space Administration white paper, which suggests small self-operated planes as an alternative to driving on congested freeways for trips of 100 to 500 miles.

The potential advantages of flying cars are fairly obvious. But creating a practical flying car isn’t going to be easy. As the NASA paper notes, “the ability for these vehicles to satisfy higher speed DOT [Dept. of Transportation] highway and crash tests, high-speed gust tolerance while maintaining lane clearance, lightweight suspension and wheels, and failsafe yet simple wing and tail folding systems are significant challenges.” Beyond that, safeguards would be needed to airborne drivers from crashing into each other or buildings accidentally (or on purpose, as terrorists have been known to do). Are the risks worth it? Offer your opinion below.

Should Teenage Internet Addicts be Forced to Go to Boot Camp?

With 45-megabit download speeds available for a fraction of what a much, much slower connection costs in the U.S., broadband-wired coffee-and-junk food joints known as “PC-bangs” open around the clock on practically every street corner, and a youth culture that affords top online gamers such as Choi Yeon-sung the sort of notoriety and adulation that a LeBron James might get here, it’s probably no surprise that South Korea has perhaps the most Web-crazed  population on the planet. We’re talking about a nation where a few years ago, a 24-year-old man suffered a fatal blood clot after playing the Korean 3-D medieval fantasy game Mu Online for 86 straight hours, the first-ever instance of a person actually dying from excessive Internet use. According to the South Korean newspaper Chosunilbo, a recent government study found that nearly one in three South Korean adolescents have such a Web Jones that they can’t control their craving to log on, and 14 percent need mental health treatment and counseling for their addiction.

As a result, the New York Times reports, South Korea has opened the Jump Up Internet Rescue School (sorry, they apparently don’t have a Web site),  a boot camp that aims to cure webheads and console jockeys by making them do calisthenics, run obstacle courses, march in the rain and perform household chores -- all under continuous surveillance, to make sure they don’t slip in a few games or mp3 downloads on their Internet-capable cell phones (43 percent of South Koreans have them). The Times describes one 15-year-old participant, who was forced by his parents to attend because he was spending up to 17 hours a day online playing Sudden Attack and staring at Japanese comics, steeling up his courage to climb a telephone pole and then jump off in a harness.

“Do you have anything to tell your mother?” the drill instructor shouted from below.

“No!” he yelled back.

“Tell your mother you love her!” ordered the instructor.

“I love you, my parents!” he replied.

“Then jump!” ordered the instructor.

South Korea, it should be mentioned, isn’t the only Asian nation to try the militaristic cure for electronic junkies. China also has opened a camp for Internet addicts, run by an army colonel, outside Beijing. Reuters reports that the teenage trainees rise at 6:15 a.m. to don their khaki uniforms and march with a drill sergeant barking in their ears. Instead of gunning down digital adversaries online, the campers must participate in war game exercises in which they have to shoot at each other for real, albeit with laser guns.

"Many of the Internet addicts here have rarely considered other people's feelings. The military training allows them to feel what it's like to be a part of a team," Chinese camp psychologist Xu Leiting told Reuters. "It also helps their bodies recover and makes them stronger." One boot-camp inmate … er, participant, admitted that the harsh regimen had made him finally realize “the falseness of video games.”

You may be thinking: Subjecting teenage keyboard fiends to all this in-your-face militarism is kind of overkill, isn’t it? What’s the harm in wasting an hour or six slaying some pixels in Halo 3? On the other hand, you may have just Googled this 2006 New Scientist report of a Stanford University study that found that one in eight Americans showed signs of problematic Internet overuse. Should the U.S. create boot camps similar to the ones in Asia? Should youthful Internet addicts be compelled to play soldier? Express your opinion below.

Should Runners with High-tech Prostheses Be Allowed to Compete Against Non-disabled Athletes?

Oscar Pistorius can run the 100 meters in 10.91 seconds, about a second behind the fastest sprinters in the world. But what’s really amazing about the 21-year-old South African is that he does it without lower legs or feet. Born without fibulas, Pistorius’ lower legs were amputated when he was just 11 months old. But he didn’t let his disability prevent him from playing rugby, until a serious knee injury compelled him to give up the sport. At his physician’s suggestion, he switched to track. Pistorius, who uses transtibial prostheses to run, immediately became a sensation. In his first competition in 2004, after just two months of training, he ran the 100 meters in 11.51 seconds, shattering the world record for amputees by seven-tenths of a second. Eight months later, in the Athens Paralympics, he won a silver medal in the 100 and a gold in the 200 meters, with a 21.97 time that made him the first amputee ever to break 22 seconds at that distance. Since then, he’s broken his own world records more than two dozen times.

Pistorius is no longer content to run only in races for disabled runners. Here’s an amazing YouTube video of him running against fully abled competitors in the 400 meters at a meet in Rome in July, in which he finished second with a time of 46.9 seconds. (That’s 3.8 seconds off the world record set by Michael Johnson back in 1999.) His dream is to compete in the Olympic Games.

Undeniably, Pistorius is one of the world’s most incredible athletes — one who, as a must-read Wired magazine profile of him puts it, may compel the world to rethink what it means to be a disabled athlete. But is it fair to permit him to compete against fully abled runners? It’s unclear whether his state-of-the-art  Cheetah carbon-fiber racing prostheses, made by Icelandic manufacturer Ossur, merely make him nearly as fast as he would be with his own lower legs, or whether the continual advances that designers are making in the technology ultimately will make him even faster than he might have been.

The International Association of Athletics Federations, track and field’s international governing body, is pondering the question. An IAAF rule already prohibits “use of any technical device that incorporates springs, wheels or any other element that provides the user with an advantage over another athlete not using such a device.” But the federation has agreed to allow Pistorius to compete in some races so that scientists can study him and the impact of his use of prostheses. (Relatively little research has been done on double-amputee runners, particularly ones who lost lower limbs at such a young age.) But according to a May 2007 New York Times article, IAAF director of development Elio Locatelli is against allowing Pistorius to compete. “With all due respect, we cannot accept something that provides advantages. It affects the purity of sport. Next will be another device where people can fly with something on their back.”

But Pistorius also has his supporters. In the Times article, Robert Gailey, an associate professor of physical therapy at the University of Miami Medical School, questioned the IAAF’s motives. “Are they looking at not having an unfair advantage?” He asked. “Or are they discriminating because of the purity of the Olympics, because they don’t want to see a disabled man line up against an able-bodied man for fear that if the person who doesn’t have the perfect body wins, what does that say about the image of man?”

What do you think? Express your opinion by posting a comment here.