Who cares if there's life on Mars?

Last night, I confirmed a theory of mine. If the average Joe (or Jill, as the case may be) knew what scientists meant when they talk about 'life on Mars', they really wouldn't care. And they definitely wouldn't care enough to spend the huge amounts of money that Martian exploration would take.

I tossed this statement out at a party last night, and got exactly the results I expected. People thought that 'life' meant beings like us. Maybe not looking like us, but with some sort of intelligence with which we could communicate. When I told them that even the most optimistic scientists are only looking for...bacteria, all the romance dribbled out.

So here are some suggestions for things we want the great scientific minds of our day to focus on, rather than Martian bacteria:

• xerox machines that can put the staple in the proper corner of the page, if you are printing horizontally. Frankly, this one really bugs me. The copy machine at work can convert a 1-sided original to 2-sided copies (or vice versa), can enlarge or reduce the size of the print, can make multiple copies, can program additional jobs ahead while it is printing one, and can collate, all at the blink of an eye. But it can't figure out where I want the staple. And I can't figure out why this is so hard, and why there hasn't been a mass uprising of the paper class to protest this silly state of affairs.
  
• 'E' thinks that a cure for cancer has probably been found, and is being suppressed for some reason (probably financial), but if a cure hasn't yet been found, the scientists should concentrate on that first.
  
• How about a universal remote control gadget that can turn off ANY car alarm, after 30 seconds. Frankly, after that point the noise serves only to annoy the neighbors, as any thief worth his salt is already gone and can't hear the alarm anymore.
  
• This one has already been invented, of course, but for some reason is rare. I'm speaking of public clocks that show the proper time. When I walk through Penn Station, which purportedly runs a transportation system according to a schedule, every clock has a different time. Of all the places I regularly go, this is the one place where the difference of a single minute is actually significant. At work, we interact with people around the globe, so sometimes we intentionally set a clock to a different time zone. This might make sense if we put the proper label on the clock, but it doesn't help me figure out if I'm late for a meeting. And we won't even mention people's VCRs that flash 12:00:00 perpetually. I bet some people think that is the 'on' symbol.
  
• Health food that tastes good. I know, some of the people nearest and dearest to me think that health food already tastes good, but if it really tasted good, no one would be eating twinkies any more. Have you ever tried fat free cheese? I thought that it might improve if I melted it in the microwave. Oh oh, big mistake. First of all, it doesn't melt properly, it just gets softer, but with a weird texture. But worse came when I tried to eat it. It actually stuck to my teeth. You could probably use it as a denture adhesive, but not as a food substance.
  
• Can we take the people who create infomercials, and apply their genius to inventing products that actually do what they claim? After all, don't we all want an effortless way to get the results of exercise while watching TV? or weight-loss without dieting? Or a carpet cleaner that really cleans?