The Future Is Now

As we all know, in the movie Back to the Future (Part 2), the main characters travel to the future to...

Uh... 

I dunno.  Something about Lea Thompson getting breast implants.  The last two movies were weak on plot.

Anyway, the interwebs are all aflutter with talk of what BttF2 (there's an embarrassing acronym) got wrong.  No, we don't have flying cars, holograms, or electronic Ronald Reagans serving drinks at bars.  Don't give up hope, though, we do have some pretty amazing things:

We have a permanent space station.

No, not that cool one.  This one that looks like something you'd use to till your garden.

We're experimenting with warp drive.

Although, it's based on the theory there's something called "exotic matter" which we haven't discovered or proven to exist yet.  Also, it's called the Alcubierre drive, so people will be flying around at 3 Alcubes instead of Warp Factor 3.

I'm brilliant, but have a lame name.

Yeah, not nearly as cool.  If anyone has Mr. Alcubierre's phone number, can you call and ask him to change his last name to Warp?  Thanks.

There's 3d printers and games that watch you move instead of using controllers and ubiquitous pornography and internets and cell phones.  Those aren't all that surprising.  You go back in time to the 1950s and tell them you can ask a question into your phone and get an answer back and they'll shrug and point at a library.

No if you really want to blow their minds, tell them about milk and eggs.  Yeah, go back and read that again.  Milk and eggs.

Dig this: we can store milk at room temperature for weeks and still drink it safely.  I know, right?!  Sounds crazy.  However, there are these things called tetra packs.  They're just pasteurized milk in a cardboard box, but they're still safe to drink.

Still creepy if you think about the animal it came from, though.

There's something even crazier: pasteurized shell eggs.  Yeah, the name is a little strange.  For a while, I was confused.  Are they pasteurized inside the shell?  Are the shells pasteurized but not the rest of them?  Are they eggs in pasteurized bullets?

It seems there's this one company that takes eggs, puts them in a warm water bath to kill off the salmonella and BAM!  Eggs that last 67 days in the refrigerator and you can eat raw.

Mmmm!  Albumen.

Remember when you could make a cake or cookies and lick the beaters?  You can do that again!  Without vomiting and being admitted to a hospital!*

Take that Star Trek!

Maybe the yellow cubes are raw yolk.

If you went back in time to the 1950s and tell them we can drink warm milk and eat raw eggs they'd...  Well, they'd probably take a long drag on their cigarettes on their asbestos cigarette holders and say "We do that all the time."

Never mind.

* Unfortunately, PSE's (a better acronym than BttF2) aren't available everywhere and the company's website is out of date, but if you call them they're more than happy to point you to a nearby store that sells them.  And they'll send you coupons.  They're nice guys.