Oil glut

My father and my brother the genius were so alike it scared me.  The first word ever applied to either one is "brilliant."  Both of them spent enormous amounts of effort on some cause.  My father spent four years trying to invent a sewing machine which would sew the toe of pantyhose invisibly.  He turned my brother's bedroom into a machine shop, surprising my brother when he came home from college  and had to sleep on a sofabed in the living room.  Dad had scores of patents on this machine, which proved difficult to design.  He became the world expert on pantyhose and was about to cash in worldwide when all the women of all  nations simultaneously decided they hated wearing pantyhose, discarded them, and started wearing trousers or going barelegged..  Even Anna Wintour.  And when you've lost Anna Wintour you've lost everyone who counts.

My brother the genius has a scheme for extracting energy from seawater.  Don't ask.  If he were rich he would devote all his time and resources to the project.  He also has lots of patents.  Needless to say, after the spectacular failure of wind and solar power nobody wants to listen.

When my mother was alive, he was convinced that all the natural gas in the world was going to be used up imminently, maybe within a year or two.  He actually ordered an oil burning furnace for her house.  When the installer came, the cleaning lady warned mother in time and was met with armed resistance and was forcefully ejected.  Thank heaven she caught him before the backhoe was applied to her rose garden.

It didn't take much acumen to consider him mistaken.  Just because someone is brilliant doesn't necessarily make him right.I felt in my gut that sooner or later,  there would be an oil glut and I was right.

The boy genius.

My brother the genius as a boy. He really was an extraordinarily bright child, reading physics books when he was five. He went to school for the requisite 13 years, but they didn't teach him anything, he knew it all already. His practical judgment is another story. He used an inheritance to buy a Wang computer. Remember them? Neither does anyone else, except perhaps Mr Wang. It cost $30,000 but was, according to him, a great investment. The company went out of business the following year. In the 1970s, he believed strongly that we were going to run out of natural gas within the near future. He tried to get mother to convert to oil heat, but she pointblank refused. This led me to conclude that we would soon have a glut of natural gas. He thinks everyone in the country should be on Medicare. Any takers for that theory?