Rhetorical Questions for a High-Tech Society

Prologue. Everybody has had "aha!" revealing moments, but how about these "oho?" rhetorical questions.

Q1. Why do we have to carry our laptop while traveling? Why can't every airport provide computers with THE Internet Operating System where you can insert your personal "comcard", the size of an ordinary credit card?
Q2. As far as I know, Pythagoras Theorem and Euclid's Algorithm have not changed very much over the years. Why can't we have one Basic Mathematics course written by the best mathematics teacher, taught free over the Internet?
Q3. How is it that dropouts as a class have contributed most to high-technology? Is it possible that there is something right with our education system?
Q4. Why can't we have an year with four quarters of 91 days, instead of the 12 months with varying number of days in them? In the four quarter year, the New Year Day does not belong to any quarter, Leap Year has an Old Year Day, and every four hundred years, Old Year Day would not appear.
Q5. Vices never seem to die. Do we still have to carry on with the archaic fps (foot-pound-second) system? Is it too much to ask for a 100 second minute, 100 minute hour and a 10 hour day?
Q6. More than two thousand years ago Alexander went from Greece to India to attack them. About a thousand years later Genghis Khan went from China to Austria to plunder them. We still seem to be doing it. Can't we stop it?
Q7. Why do we fight about religion, which none of us practice? Can we work on a common ethics with no religion exclusively owning it?
Q8. How is it that the highest job in any country does not need any educational qualifications?
Q9. If you preach love, you get crucified, if you preach nonviolence, you get shot. Why do the homo sapiens (human the wise) behave like this?
Q0. Finally, can we pass a law to make sure that manuals are not missing from our computer purchases?

The last item Q0 needs some explanation. These rhetorical questions were originally sent as an email to the author of a review of a camcorder in New York Times, who said in the review that it was an "aha!" moment for him to find that tapes were not needed to use the camera. The reviewer also happens to be the originator of a highly successful publication series called Missing Manuals. He was kind enough to reply to my email saying, "Brilliant!! Make a poster of these, and you'll sell millions!". I thought the millions of surfers on the Internet should know that we as a race never ask ourselves the most obvious questions.

Aside. Why is the last item numbered Q0 instead of Q10? Because, I like to use {1,2} instead of {0,1} in modulo 2 arithmetic. Also, I like to designate the ground node as 0 instead of the usual (n+1) in the analysis of n-port networks.

Epilogue. Note that no great infrastructure is needed to implement the answers to these questions and hence infrastructure cannot be used as an excuse for inaction.