People sure seem to like magic. You've got your Harry Potter, your Lord of the Rings, your D&D, and all of the other countless books, movies, shows, and games that take place in a magical world. Yep, magic would be pretty useful.

If it existed, that is.

But I'm not going to get into how many people steadfastly refuse to acknowledge reality and give up their precious little delusions. No, I'm thinking about something else. That something else is an age old question.

Which is better? Magic of technology?

I think you can guess which side I emphatically concur with. For those of you who are a little "slow", it's technology. Yes, technology, I contend, is vastly superior to magic in just about every conceivable way. Before you freak out and start jabbing a voodoo doll with my name on it, let me explain.

First, let's assume magic exists. I'm not talking about that sissy "Earth magic" of the Wiccans where a spell might possibly influence events in an indirect way. I'm talking about Harry Potter or D&D magic. I'm talking about in your face, summoning a dragon to vanquish your enemies, ass-kicking magic. How can technology possibly win against that?

It all boils down to one simple thing: John Q. Public. In every presentation I've ever seen, only a very select few people could use magic, and that knowledge took a lifetime to accumulate. A powerful wizard was a rare find indeed (although not as rare as a good-hearted lawyer). Sure, a wizard could be mind-boggling powerful, but you had to be an exceptional human being to become one.

On the any hand, any slack-jawed retard with at least one working eye and a working hand could shoot said wizard in the head. Yep, while magic is concentrated in the hands of a few, technology easily spreads to the masses. In today's world, we can easily travel 60 miles in an hour, send messages to the other end of the world instantly, and watch porn any time we want. How many wizards could do THAT in a day? I haven't even touched on submarines, supersonic flight, space travel, antibiotics, computers, or comic books.

With, military technology gets more outrageously lopsided. Imagine a majestic, ancient dragon, the paragon of a magical world, its head brimming with magical knowledge, shot down by a sparrow missile launched by an F-18 20 miles away. Yep, it's dragon burgers at the mess hall tonight.

"B-but magic can do amazing things!" screeches a sniveling uber-nerd. "They can cast fireballs and lightning bolts and stuff like that! They can kill of hundreds of people and laugh about it!"

Granted, the kill ratio for an exceptionally powerful wizard may be 100 or even 1,000 to one. But those thousand Joe Schmoes can be easily replaced in their trailer park breeding grounds. When that lucky bullet hits that wizard in the noggin, another one won't be reappearing any time soon. Of course, if he's REALLY powerful, we can just nuke him. Laugh THAT off, Chuckles.

In the Middle Ages, guns sucked. They took forever to load and were wildly inaccurate and unreliable. On the other hand, you had the long bow, which could fire 6 time in the time it took the gun to fire once, plus it had reliability and accuracy in its favor. So how did the gun ever become the mainstay it is today?

Easy. It took longbowmen a lifetime to get their skills. Firing a bow with any ability requires a lot of strength, excellent vision, and a very steady hand. Pretty much any village idiot could fire a gun. That's not to dis the skill required for sharpshooting, but you can be plenty deadly no formal training in guns.

Yeah, it would be neat to be a wizard, provided the local villagers weren't gunning for you. It would be swell to afflict my foes with boils or magically convince hot virgins to come over to my place and, you know, clean up or something. On the other hand, that would take years and years of study, hidden away in some dank tower reading books all day. In the end, IF I didn't accidentally blow myself up and IF I didn't succumb to some natural death and IF I had whatever natural talent you need to be a wizard, then MAYBE I'd be half proficient.

The long and the short of it is that if there ever were any real wizards, they're certainly all dead by now.