BRAIN stretch is an exciting concept, the more so as John Brockman's [3] anthology pushes everything to the extreme. Can our brains exist without bodies? If, as Ray Kurzweil [4] says, ''we need only 1 per cent of 1 per cent of the sunlight to meet all our energy needs'', why are we pouring billions into Middle East wars over oil and not into research on nano-engineered solar panels and fuel cells? Read these 100 or so mini-essays and realise how lacking in vision most politicians are.