I am going to nit-pick on Wegener. His theory of continental drift is not plate tectonics, and he was wrong for pretty much all the reasons that other geologists and physicists of the time said he was wrong. Plate tectonics was able to explain Wegener crucial observation of the continents "fitting together" but with a different and plausible mechanism. His observation was an important and theory-driving anomaly. I remember a text book from 1960s examining both the strong evidence for continental matchup and the highly problematic issues with his idea of continent drift. An expanding earth was also postulated which fitted a lot of observation but would imply physical laws changed over long time periods. In short, it is a lot more nuanced. Similarly, Boltzmann's ideas on atomic theory were widely accepted in chemistry though physics took longer. Again, physics had an alternative hypothesis and it needed an experiment to separate them that didnt happen till after Boltzmann's death.  I think there are similar nuances with Marshall and H Pyroli. The "heroic" lone scientist against the establishment may be an appealing narrative but in terms of how science actually makes progress, I think the nuances in these cases are important and more telling about the process.

While I agree that the examples are stupid, I am not so sure about the electrical and plumbing. Connecting things to a public water supply that result in contamination from backflow/siphoning is very bad. You also dont want to electrocute a power pole worker who thinks power is off, but your house with DYO solar connection suddenly starts exporting power to grid. If I was insurer, I would take a dim view of unregister plumbing or electricial work in your house because of fire and flood risk. Where I live, so long as you are owner of property , you can do electricial that doesnt involve swithboard or cables coming into switchboard from street. Fair compromise? Drainlaying rules are still extremely strict though. 

The problem for me with porridge has always been too much water, not enough oats - I am hungry well before lunch despite feeling full at breakfast. Even more so when out in the hills, tramping/climbing.   Muesli or soaked oats dont have that problem. 

We soak whole rolled oats overnight in kefir and eat with nuts, seed and fruit for breakfast. It's my wife's favourite meal and I miss it if travelling. I do wonder about the effect of the acidic kefir on the oats. I wouldnt expect it reduce phytic acid, but I would expect breakdown of fructans and other carbohydrates into more digestable forms. That said, I really dont care much unless it's killing me. It is just a great way to start the day and gets me through to lunch without getting hungry. The slight fag is making kefir every 4th night - getting the kefir grains to scale production for more than that is problematic. 

Well for the dark humour side of things...A surgical ward in UK for guys with testicular cancer was named "The lonely ballroom"

New Zealand government research sort of does that. In 90s, the public research was reorganised into institutes - private companies but owned by government (government of day appoints the board members as position falls vacant). Initially, all government funding of these institutes was contestable - vaguely like the PI model. The cost and inefficiency of this system led to this be abandoned. Instead, the institutes get "Core" funding to support their core area (eg earth science in my case). Essentially the institutes propose very broad-brush programmes (so peer-driven) about how this will be spent. External panels (researchers from similar institutions overseas mostly, or possibly unis) critique it and a government bureaucracy evaluates against performance and alignment with government goals. Essentially it’s a negotiation process that sets a contract of around 5 years (from memory) which get tweaked as required. A similar model provides research funding (as opposed to teaching funding) to the universities. There are also several contestable funds, open to the whole research community. 

Does it work? I doubt any system is perfect and this one has a number of downsides. It is certainly a much more efficient system (less scientist-hours spent chasing money, and less bureaucracy evaluating bids) than what preceded it. There are advantages to the individual scientist though in pursuing contestable funding, though most will involve teams of scientists, often across multiple institutes/universities.  Core funding is tied to agreed programmes and the programme manager controls it. You can’t just do your thing on Core funding. Winning contestable funding means the team that won it is in control. Enough funding for your pet project and you can thumb your nose at institute management. 

The downsides as I see them: The % of government funding going to each institute is very static. It is hard to convince the government that your discipline is now hotter and more important than the discipline of another institute. The opposite was true of the contestable model - uncertainty of future funding made investment in research infrastructure (eg vessels) uncertain. Scrapping between institutes over money turned to scrapping within institutes over money. Perhaps this is actually a major upside - at least the scrappers know what they are talking about unlike the bureaucrats. The accountability model is everyone’s bugbear. It's public money so asking for accountability is obviously reasonable, but it generally feels like time-consuming paperwork to clueless bureaucrats. There must be a better way.

It should be noted that the institutes total funding thus consists of Core funding, contestable funding but also commercial research contracts. Depending on the Institute, this can be pretty high. Ours has been up 50% commercial. Others even higher.

Well here (NZ), reclaimed land is often a very problematic climate and tectonic risk.  Lots of discussion about managed retreat. Ok, plenty of 19th C stuff was done badly, but engineering for sealevel rise, earthquake (liquifaction), tsunami and storm exposure isnt cheap. Also, we have had too much finding-out-the-hard-way that coastal wetland was performing valuable environmental services that are not easily replaced. I am happy to have strong regulations around that. To make it work and be economic to maintain over very long term, then I think you need to have large area of land created compared to length of your seawall (the Dutch situation) and yes, the easy ones have been taken.

There are other things on with playgrounds I think. Here (NZ), there has been a big movement toward making playgrounds safer - which has made them a great deal less fun. Since children still want adventure and a challenge, they use playgrounds in ways not intended (eg on top of frames holding swings etc). 

Apparently our kids were "feral". As far as I can tell, this was for being allowed in the bush unsupervised. They got by on one broken leg, 4 pulled elbows, one concussion plus usual scrapes and bruises which help teach limits. All but the concussion (on a school playground during break) happened while supervised. Maybe we werent paying enough attention.

But my own upbringing had far more freedom. Only 1km to beach and the rule was no going into water without an adult, no digging in sand dunes, and "careful on the road" walking to and fro. Oh and tell an adult where you were going. The environment did not seem as safe to us when our own children came along. Perception? Reality? Lot more cars for one thing.

Oh, and lets hear it for the scout movement. Getting really dirty, proper physical challenges. My son did sea scouts where supervision amounted mostly to ensuring they were wearing life jackets and fishing them out of water if required. They raced in, rigged their boats and got onto water as fast as possible with no direction at all. Water fights, boardings, and races all ensued. On the way, some pretty good water/boat skills developed mostly by osmosis. 

I would give this a very low probability of it happening. The political risks are enormous. I don't think people react very well to having their toys taken away - including the people in your security apparatus that rulers would depend on to stifle revolt. Way worse than taking radios. I would also be extremely surprised if Russian commerce did not also depend on internet for marketing and sales now. Going back would be very hard.

But what it gets wrong is also interesting. It has an incoherent model of the world (which is probably what you would expect) and that messes with the writing.