Rants

Every month, our editors review the latest and greatest gear and gadgets. And every month, a few smart alecks — er, thoughtful readers — object to our assessment of the clarity of this screen or the oomph of that router. Rarely, though, is there objection to an entire product category. But now we know: Wired readers hate leaf blowers. The noisy devices are "infernal," you said, "satanic." The tender-eared were joined by the sharp-eyed: What we dubbed a lightbulb in a photo essay of awesome x-rays was actually a vacuum tube, and you called us on it. Nice. Let's see, that's things that blow, things that suck ... oh yeah. Things that rock: You think Shai Agassi's plan for electric cars kicks ass, and you're ready to sign up. At least those products will be quiet.

Oil Change
Your article on Shai Agassi and his plan to help get the world off oil excites me more than any other news I've received in a long time ("Driven," issue 16.09). Forged from reason and rock-solid common sense, Agassi's vision brings to mind the big buzzwords of 2008: hope and change.
Brian Lee
Evanston, Illinois

Not So Fast
Great article on Shai Agassi's plan to develop an electric-car infrastructure ("Driven"). I applaud what he is trying to accomplish, but batteries are just an energy-storage device, not an energy generator — he's not replacing oil, he's replacing the gas tank. The burden of producing clean power is being shifted to the electric utilities. Speaking as the founder of a company that designs and sells renewable energy systems, I can tell you that if it were that easy, we would have solved our oil addiction decades ago.
Darren Hammell
Princeton, New Jersey

Geek Orthodox
In "When Tech Attacks!" (Start, issue 16.09), you say "Christian theologians denounced the printing press as the work of the devil." Whoa! It wasn't so simple. Remember, the monks of the Dark Ages preserved classical civilization by copying its texts, making possible the technological discoveries of later centuries. And monks welcomed the printing press. Gutenberg's most famous project was a Latin Catholic Bible, and you can almost hear the relief in the cloister: "You mean we don't have to write it out by hand anymore?" As a Benedictine monk working with the world's largest archive of digital and microfilm images of old manuscripts, I have strong feelings about both the preservation of ancient culture and the benefits of modern technology. Whatever you might say about other neighborhoods in the Church, we Benedictines have always been in the technological vanguard.
Father Columba Stewart
Collegeville, Minnesota

An Ill Wind Blows
Despite a ban on residential use of gas-powered leaf blowers here in Los Angeles, my neighbors and their gardeners kill the peace and quiet of my weekends by pushing leaf litter around their property (or out of theirs and into mine) with those ridiculously infernal and incessantly screaming machines ("A Mighty Wind," Test, issue 16.09).
With what is undoubtedly a quaint fondness for the civility and self-powered purity of the rakes and brooms I defiantly muscle around my yard, I can only be disappointed that wired felt the imperative to promote such confounding contraptions with absolutely no consideration for the pollution and ill will they generate.
Will Campbell
Los Angeles, California

Exchange Rate
Imagine my dismay when I read that Shai Agassi intends to "swat away" the battery problem ("Driven"). (I guess that means it goes away like a fly and then comes back.) In the real world, a service station won't even check my oil. Now it's going to swap out a battery with a hydraulic lift? Starbucks can have a 20-minute line to get coffee. How long will I have to wait for my fresh battery? And these batteries, which are so expensive I can't even own one myself, will always be stacked up, charged, and ready to go? Please let me know when you have a real story about electric cars.
Carl Spearow
Gilbert, Arizona

Fanboy Flame
I'll be the jerkface fanboy and suck spit through my braces as I say: In an article about continuity in the Star Wars universe, did Wired really label the far end of the timeline BBY (Before Battle of Yavin), when we all know it should be ABY (After Battle of Yavin) ("Master of the Universe," issue 16.09)? Oh, the irony.
Mike Hart
Brooklyn, New York

Secret Messages
I have made a pact with a friend that if either of us needs to communicate with the other via time travel (to warn of impending robot attacks, for example), we will do it through your back page, "Found: Artifacts From the Future."
Jared Davis
Washington, DC

>Blushes<
Best. Issue. Ever. I cannot get over how amazing your September issue was. All of the stories were handpicked for me! As an independent film producer, the insight into the mind of Jim Jannard was a refreshing look behind all the hype and publicity that the Red One camera has gotten ("A Star Is Born"). The piece on Shai Agassi and his company inspired me to help make this world be a "better place" ("Driven"). And continuity-database cop Leland Chee has a job that all fanboys — myself included — covet ("Master of the Universe"). wired, I tip my cosmonaut helmet to you.
Kevin Tostado
San Diego, California

Starck Contrast
If you want to talk about an environmentally friendly chair, lets go back to wooden chairs (Design, Play, issue 16.09). If a piece of wood gets banged up or scratched, I can grab some wood glue, sandpaper, and varnish and you will never know the difference. With Philippe Starck's polycarbonate chair, I'll have to get my "very big laser" out of my other pants pocket.
Excerpted from a comment posted on Wired.com by
cutullus

The Case for Space
Whatever happened to the American dream of human space exploration ("Welcome to Star City," issue 16.09)? Reviving it would restore national pride and bring purpose back to NASA. It would be an investment in our future and a benefit to all humanity. Let's keep the dream alive.
Rick Schreiner
San Marino, California

Rage Against the Machine
Digital cinema is great, looks pretty, and has its advantages — but please don't push the stereotypical belief that it's always better or that it will make everyone's life easier ("A Star Is Born," issue 16.09). The reason most cinemas haven't shifted to digital is that Hollywood and the theater business still can't agree on how the conversion should happen. The popular belief is that the studios should either pay for it or offer some kind of rebate to theaters forced to convert. But Hollywood wouldn't go for that, ever. Everyone thinks that a theater runs on nostalgia and happy fairy dust until they realize the business relies on something you have no control over whatsoever: the Hollywood machine.
Brian Lorelle
Albuquerque, New Mexico

Salad Bar
I built a raised square-foot garden this April (Clive Thompson, Start, issue 16.09). Tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, green onions, squash, and peppers grew like crazy. I saved hundreds of dollars, and once everything was in the ground, the only thing I spent time on was picking the ripe veggies. When I lost my job, the vegetables sustained me. Gardens can be everywhere.
Excerpted from a comment posted on Wired.com by
by sqftgardener

The Grim Reaper
I have a nice 20 x 20-foot plot in my city backyard, and I'm all for people growing more of their own food (Clive Thompson, Start). However, it's really not something that would or could ever supply a balanced and interesting diet for any period of time. A few handfuls of mesclun and cherry tomatoes aren't going to obviate the need for large farms supplying large amounts of food to urban dwellers, especially when you think about the challenges of preserving the harvest from one growing season to the next.
Excerpted from a comment posted on Wired.com by
cjrapier

A Bullwinkle in Time
Scott Brown's column on time machines (Play, issue 16.09) was entertaining, but he left out one important device: Mr. Peabody's Wabac (pronounced "way-back") Machine. Mr. Peabody appeared on The Bullwinkle Show in the 1960s, dragging Sherman, his pupil, off to various lands and times to see history unfold in rather unusual ways. In this age, when most Americans have lost all historical perspective, we need Mr. Peabody again.
Lee Westbrock
Charleston, South Carolina

Would You Like Fries With That Salvation?
I like Neal Stephenson's books a lot, but they're basically action movie scripts, lacking the sophistication, poetry, symbolism, and deep insight into characters that make the works of William Gibson and Thomas Pynchon so spectacular ("Neal Stephenson, Sci-Fi Superstar," issue 16.09). This saves those two authors from writing psychological absurdities, such as claiming that a mainstream fast-food society will ever put up with genuinely evangelical government policies, or that secular monasteries could ever exist in an evangelical nation.
Excerpted from a comment posted on Wired.com by
x20080829

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