This misuse of statistics is routinely used in American trials to lock up sex offenders in prison-type mental hospitals for life AFTER they have completed their prison sentence for sex crimes. The public – and often the defense lawyers as well – simply do not understand the faulty basis of statistical ‘evidence’ put on by the prosecutor. Because of the nature of the underlying crimes, there is emotional antipathy to begin with toward the defendant. ‘Lock ‘em up and throw away the key’ is a knee-jerk reaction – and the use of statistics (no matter how invalid the analysis) is a voodoo-science overlay a judge or jury uses to justify a conviction and life sentence.

Fair trial? Just verdict? About as fair and just as the Salem Witch trials!

Generating electricity requires generating a potential difference, for which there are not that many methods, barring major advances in physics. Methods such as electromagnetic (the method used for steam power), photovoltaic (solar cells), chemical (batteries, bioelectric), piezoelectric, thermo/pyroelectric, electrostatic. The problem with the latter, more advanced technologies, is that they do not scale easily to the Megawatt scale, required by current centralized generation technologies.

Unless we develop a portable nuclear fusion reactor, the energy available by distributed generation (mostly solar, wind, biomass, maybe using the exotic physics) is low, and would require major changes in current lifestyle to be sustainable.

The principle of conservation of energy still applies – you can not get energy out of nothing. With steam turbine (and solar cell etc.) efficiencies in the >=20% range, there is not much to gain by more efficient generation methods – certainly not an order of magnitude.

On to the second point. Thank you for the pointers to the stories! I thoroughly enjoyed them. I see no contradictions in the stories as long as you are willing to give up determinism and free will. I was trying to put together a more detail description, but then today I bumped into this article: http://discovermagazine.com/2010/mar/02-the-real-rules-for-time-travelers/ which eloquently expresses my point of view.

Secondly, I would be interested to know what contradictions are present in Robert Henlein’s two time travel stories “By his bootstraps” and “All you zombies” neither of which includes a parallel universe.