Why do I get this feeling that we are all avoiding looking at a spectre so much greater and more frightening than we care to see, that we focus on the trivial in a wilful attempt to mask the momentous?
Rob C
There are plenty of things to be afraid of - real doomsday stuff. Yellowstone is 40,000 years overdue, larger than 1,000 ordinary volcanos. I've heard that Earth's nuclear core has a 50/50 chance of dying out within the next 1,100 years, which is very short compared to a 4.4 bn year life. Sea levels will likely displace several hundred million people, soon enough.
But I think a lot about some of the seemingly ridiculous things we've gotten past - Voodoo economics is here to stay, and apparently works. Disposable cameras have been around for a long time. The nuclear waste keeps piling up, so we just push back the fences. See how easy that is?
And don't worry about Kodak. Their contracts with the military and spy agencies will feed a lot of families for some time to come. And of course, we can always make new treaties with former "adversaries" and expand Kodak's market that way. If we were really smart, we'd all get together and demand some new consumer sensor technology that Kodak's been sitting on, for apparent lack of consumer interest.