Topics for Discussion

1. Based on recent policies, it seems that the economy cannot function without a large number of billionaires who become increasingly billionistic, particularly through inheritance.

The question: would a computer program and/or a robot which simulated a billionaire's spending and investment patterns and habits perform this indispensible economic function equally well? (call it the Ascot 9000.)

2. The performance of the Pentagon in Iraq has proven catastrophic, and Iraq is embroiled in a civil war. Should we therefore reform our current military deployment with our many available divisions of Civil War re-enactors?

3. The flowering of apocolypse-enabling technologies promises that a slight excess in problem-creation over problem- solution by these technologies may end human existence with something like a radioactive nanobot-created genetically-engineeered dental plaque formed by a robot scientist's experiment to prevent tooth decay, which spreads instead to all forms of life causing a new strain of anti-biotic resistent saber-toothed bacteria to slowly nibble us all to death from the inside.

The few survivors gather in Iceland, now catastrophically obsessed with dental hygiene.

Discuss.

4. You teach a man to fish. Instead of being grateful for learning how to feed himself for a lifetime, he angrily hurls a flounder at you. Why?

5. An enormous triumphal arch is erected in Seattle and dedicated to the developers of Windows Vista. Speculate on the date.