Just wait till peak oil, and then even long-haul overnight rail across the USA will compete with air travel.

I don't hack or compile or X11 or stuff... not that good. Yet.

I'd love to play from mac to my (ugh!) PC laptop...

I don't like Microsoft. I love the idea of open source. I just don't think the group-think is dead yet. People use microsoft because people use microsoft. People use word becauseeveryone else uses it and sends stuff around in it. Blaargh! Just imagine the world we could have.

If I ran the world, (being the Nazi control freak that I am) I'd rule that we'd all shift to Mac, which would become open source. We'd keep the Mac creative guys in charge of brainstorming various projects, but also with input from the grassroots hacker community. These hacker ideas would filter up from the bottom. We'd arrange some means of having the best of both worlds dialogue online, vote on it, and move to the next big thing. And this would save on human capital, as mac users getting a job in PC land wouldn't have to relearn how to suck eggs every time, and vice versa. I mean, does the world really need 30 different word processors, and the end-user confusion when switching from one to another? New ways of doing stuff in this GLOBAL software would become 30 second snippets in the nightly news. Everyone would have an idea of how to navigate the basics, and what changes might be coming.

Then it would be boring, and reliable, and universal: yet still shiny all at the same time.

True, but what is the minimum number of people we need to shoot off to Mars to maintain enough gene-pool depth to have a viable colony? 500? I submit that if we can solve peak oil and climate change fast enough with Integral Fast Reactors (and electric cars, and New Urbanism... but don't get me started!) here on earth, then surely IFR technology will become such a cheap source of energy that our civilisation blossoms in new ways none of us expect.

Then sending 50 or so big rockets towards Mars might not seem like such a big deal. And they WILL live in large underground habitats. They might even teach us a thing or two about how to make them functional and attractive. As a species, we only tend to build these things when we HAVE to. On Mars we would HAVE to, but here? It's a beautiful day... I might go fishing. We'll just think about that expensive underground bunker habitat tomorrow hey? I've got a holiday to save for, a big fat LED TV to buy, some Cheeto's to munch on, my basement to refurbish, my grandma to yell at, some slashdot to sort out, and that other species to figure out. (Girls). So while my Star Wars Clone helmet poster will look cool on my basement wall, it does not qualify as a habitat. Or does it?

Away with you, or I shall taunt you a second time you silly English Ken-nigg-it!

You're recommending leaving animals much like us around Chernobyl? I agree, because I want a new button inserted on my workstation for self-defence purposes.

"Death by radioactive monkeys!"

One can never have enough monkey-defences.

R136a1!!?? Are you kidding me? Why not Biff? Biff is a nice name.

I say we approach Adam Carter to play the Doctor! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Carter

As far as I can tell, there are 6 main ways we are systematically destroying ecosystems. (Not including global warming!) Through what I call the 6 p’s of ecosystem destruction we are systematically taking nature and paving it over, ploughing it up, polluting it, preying on predators, spreading pests, and over-populating the entire planet!

So as well as the normal conservation programs, I'm guessing we are going to see more of these radical interventions to try and same some of the biodiversity on this planet.

It starred Kevin Costner, and has jet skies that can hide underwater, and some kid with a tattoo on her back that shows the way to dry land. Now, what was it called? Crapland? Mad Max on water? Whining world? ummm....

Love the idea, but as others have said above, the plastic needs sorting from the plankton at a microscopic level or we're just going to be hoovering up the ocean. I hope they can pull this off (without tattooing some kids back either).

My understanding is Integral Fast Reactors can't breed nuclear bomb material because the plutonium is mixed in with caesium and other junk. It's not 'clean' enough, and basically there are plenty of cheaper ways to build bombs. The power / bombs link is tenuous at best. Many countries that built the bomb did so before building nuclear power, and many countries today that built nuclear power don't have bombs. Oh, and as 93% of the world's Co2 comes from countries that ALREADY have the bomb, what exactly would we gain by banning IFR's? I happen to think Fast Breeders are the answer to peak oil, global warming and nuclear waste! Besides, 10% of USA electricity comes from burning old Soviet Warheads: nuclear power is literally eating nuclear bombs.

If you are concerned about energy security, independence from imported oil, peak oil, climate change, coal particulate pollution and lung disease, heck, IF YOU ARE CONCERNED ABOUT NUCLEAR WASTE then this is even MORE of a reason to build a whole generation of GenIV reactors!

According to environmental scientist Professor Barry Brook, today's waste could run the world for 500 years if we built enough IFR's. Who knows what energy technologies we'd have by then? But for now, we owe it to our great grandchildren to solve climate change by burning today's nuclear waste. Viewed in this light, nuclear waste is not the problem but the solution!!!

http://bravenewclimate.com/

I thoroughly agree that the book is figurative, but my best reading of it is by Dr Paul Barnett, a Sydney Anglican reformed evangelical, whose commentary is titled "Apocalypse now and then". So while figuratively describing historical events as they were unfolding back then, the book also applies as a general warning to all Christians in all ages —I think you were basically describing this in your own terms.

In these particulars, I thought the beast was figurative language for Nero, and that the book stands as a warning to us that any time governments set themselves against God's people anywhere throughout history, they were a 'beast'?

"...and that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark or the name of the beast or the number of his name." That sounds like more than a figurative remark about our attitudes, but a particular form of persecution in a particular historical period, as an example for all Christians in all ages to be aware of mindlessly following the godless leaders of the day. It does not imply any form of body coding / chip implanting is automatically 'wrong', but does imply where our ultimate loyalties are, and how we have to be mindful of these matters.

Basically, I think we agree on the basics, and that Revelation should not be read as a 'timetable of future history'. Movies like the Omen have done more to affect how modern Christians read that part of the bible than I think the average church-goer admits.

The CEO of Electric Vehicle company "Better Place" explains that he sells you the car but maintains ownership of the battery. This enables their Battery Swap station program. Most of the time these cars are charged at home, at work, and when you park at the shops. (In some countries you may even get priority parking spots as an honoured EV driver!) But when you're driving down the highway and need a 'refuel' the SatNav tells you where the closest station is, you drive in, and the battery is automatically swapped out faster than you can fill up a conventional petroleum vehicle.

They begin rolling out around the world over the next few years, hitting Canberra Australia next year. The cost of swapping the battery out is about half what we're all paying for gasoline right now, and of course means the car doesn't 'depreciate' simply because the battery it is carrying might be aging: it can't! (Older batteries are automatically withdrawn from Better Place circulation the moment they fail testing standards). Check it out people, the future is now.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Place

It all sounds simple enough when you put it like that, but you are ignoring the incredible inefficiency in this, which would result in INCREDIBLE cost. Without enormous government sponsorship it just won't happen. How many cloudy days are there across the Sahara? What hours have the greatest demand, and how long does the storage have to take? It's just not going to happen, and if it does, it means less money for health and education because the taxpayer will be subsidising this. Ted Trainer says of a Solar thermal to hydrogen system:

A system designed to deliver 1000 MW after storage would need a 1000 MW hydrogen-fuelled power station in addition to the dish system which generated the 1000 MW supply of hydrogen to run it, indicating high capital and embodied costs. The efficiencies of the various steps (e.g., .4 for hydrogen production, .8 for handling/transport, .4 for fuel cell generation) suggest an overall gross solar to wheels/use efficiency of 13%, from which the embodied and operating costs of materials-expensive hydrogen handling plant would have to be deducted. It is therefore not clear that this path would be more viable than the others considered above.

However, 4th Gen nuclear that eats nuclear waste could do the job far cheaper AND provide abundant reliable power no matter what the season or weather. So, 4 or 5 times the price for solar power that's not guaranteed, or cheap abundant electricity that could run the world for 500 years off today's nuclear waste (even if we closed all the uranium mines -- and there's enough uranium and thorium on earth to run Gen4 reactors for hundreds of millions of years). We have the technology TODAY to solve peak oil, global warming, and nuclear waste: we just need the Australian laws against nukes to be revoked so we can actually let the marketplace decide.