Back in the day, when Dr S worked in nuclear medicine, there was talk of this guy who thought MR imaging was possible, but in every talk, the only thing shown was this reconstructed fruit. 30+ years later, had a free moment to lookup the story of that guy> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Vahan_Damadian There is a long line of paradigm-shifting physicists, math wonks, engineers, investors etc that followed, some who succeeded, and others crushed.

There is so much to chew on here. Starting with How can creation be so magnificent. How can the human mind be so powerful as to mentally visualize spinning atoms and magnetic fields at the atomic scale and devise ways to manipulate that? Yet be so frail as to fret in a general sense over attribution, reward, medals, etc. As a group how can our species admire and reward entertainers way more than folks who unveil the universe. Maybe others want to add to this list?

One wonders about the “citrus pictures” of today, stuff that seems unlikely, over-hyped, hard-to-imagine, and which will become reality that our children look back on in another 30 years.

(PS .. imo the answer could be “none” if we don’t collectively get our heads straight and focus more on educating our children and less on target-marketing them)