ASK DR. SCHUND (C)1995 Alan M. Schwartz Dr. Schund, what giant leaps of technology are the United States poised to actuate? The darkest secrets of a corrupt and degenerate government - like just how many postage stamps Dan Rostonkowski spirited out of the Congressional Post Office - are forever hidden from public discovery by their classification as Top Secret/Lotus Eater files. The remarkable coincidence of Dr. Schund's Marine military surplus super-heuristic interactive timesharing highly engaged autonomous device (codenamed North Oliver) being in exact resonance with the appropriate Top Secret/Lotus Eater Pentagon mainframes prior to data encryption has enabled him to open a window into the shape of things to come. He has seen the future, and it is going to cost a fortune. Here are some of the technological breakthroughs simmering on Federal back burners: MOLECULAR BIOLOGY: As the nuclear family continues to decay, as moral degeneracy and societal anomie reach catastrophic proportions, and as the average operational cerebral vigor of 5- year olds asymptotically approaches that of a rutabaga, we must do something to restore the moral and intellectual fiber of America! Research grants have stoked the investigational fury of academic laboratories everywhere. What is their answer? Recombinant Femininity! Virulent filoviral vectors carrying Recombinant Femininity genetic code flanked by potent initiator sequences are as we breathe suffusing our biome, pouring oil upon troubled waters of hormonal storms and restoring traditional distaff doctrines of children, kitchen and church. Failing that, a genetic auto-destruct is also contained within, known to security-cleared biological adepts as heretic engineering. If women prove resistant to wearing pearls, makeup and shirt-waist dresses to breakfast, we simply burn them as witches and requisition replacements from Russian and Philippine mail order bride catalogs. No problem. COMPUTER SCIENCE: Having conquered hardware, firmware and software, the nerdish products of tens of thousands of university computer terminals nationwide turn their attention to wetware. What is being hidden from our view? Boolean sexuality! Generation X struts its stuff, piercing body parts, scarifying flesh, branding skin, tattooing torsos, writhing in mosh pits, smoking toad and otherwise shaking their little fingers of condemnation at Yuppie materialism. Little do they suspect that our most determined military minds have requisitioned out the ORgasm to defense contractors, amplifying it beyond normal human comprehension with the addition of the ANDgasm, the NORgasm and the astounding, the conspicuous, the superlatively arousing Exclusive NORgasm. Watch us eat hot ecstasy, unemployable Grunge scum! Human Factors Ergonomics: Automobile airbags proved to be a most felicitous strategy for separating car buyers from an extra couple of thousand of dollars while simultaneously creating a pervasive environmental hazard requiring Federal remediation when the cars are junked. Interim difficulties of airbag deployment - broken forearms; thermal and chemical burns; burst eardrums; nitrogen anoxia; crushed chests and the like - prove to sustain considerable interim nuisance value. Before lawsuits could bury Washington papermeisters in a media mausoleum, intense airbag engineering scrutiny by the folks who brought you the Edsel, the Pinto gas tank, and the V8-6-4 engine sought near-term conceptual improvements, hence: The waterbag: Upon collision, the entire contents of the car radiator dump into your lap, protecting you from harm. The need for passenger-side protection underlined the insufficient volume of working fluid available, even in a 1958 Cadillac, hence The steambag: Upon collision, the entire contents of the radiator dump into a superheater and exit as 2000 times the volume of live steam into your lap, protecting you from harm. The sandbag: A potentially catastrophic trade imbalance synergism with oil-rich Arab countries' ongoing exports was narrowly avoided. The recycled activated sludge bag: Submitted by the Environmental Protection agency as an answer to some of its own niggling difficulties, this idea was found to possess "deficient temporally-parameterized motility fill form factor potentials." This is a $383 million way of saying "it won't work." What is the answer? Combine surplus Star Wars electromagnetic pulse cannon gigawatt microwave diodes with traditional Department of Agriculture grain surplus woes to get Puffed Wheatbags and Popcornbags. Not only are they ecologically sound and remarkably effective, but everybody can enjoy a hot, nutritious snack while waiting for the tow trucks to arrive. The contract has been sublet to the Peacetime Military Division of Jiffy-Pop.