A friend emailed me this:

When NASA first started sending up astronauts, they quickly discovered
that ball-point pens would not work in zero gravity.

To combat this problem, NASA scientists spent a decade and $12 billion
developing a pen that writes in zero gravity, upside down, on almost any
surface including glass and at temperatures ranging from below freezing
to over 300 C.
The Russians used a pencil.

Enjoy paying your taxes -- they're coming due again
This is why I hate politics. What does that email have to do with politics you might say? Americans are not stupid, we were aware we could use a pencil but what we wanted to do was make it look as if we (capitalism) were superior to them (communism). Imagine being in a room and the other guy has just a pencil but you have this zero gravity, writes on anything, all temperature pen. It’s an ego thing. This type of behavior I think causes a lot of problems but at the same time these behaviors lead to great technology. Such as how the first computer was used by the government to target enemies (basicly aiming a big gun) but now look at computers. Even the internet, TCP/IP has patterns based upon the idea that the technology in use before would have communications disabled if a nuclear war would occur. The things that destroy us, literally or in character, also seem to better us.

Any thoughts?