Despite public opinion, government policy, or personal preference, this universe is only equipped with a single source of energy and it happens to be Nuclear. We can either obtain our energy needs directly from the natural sources of fusion (stars) by using photo cells, indirectly by using wind, wave, hydro or stored biomass carbon fuel, or we can produce it directly ourselves in fission or fusion reactors. Our current solar technologies,fully exploited, are not capable of supplying the energy needs of 7 billion plus humans. We will, of necessity, require nuclear fission to generate the balance of the power to maintain a minimum standard of living for the worlds population for the foreseeable future. We do not, however, have to locate that generating capacity inside the Earth's gravity well/environmental cocoon. We have the technology to place that generating capacity either in an unstable high earth orbit ( so that it flies away from the Earth if the orbit decays ) or on the Moon. The energy can be transmitted back to earth by laser, microwave, or as chemical reagents ready to be recombined into harmless byproducts ( like water ). We can, and should, be moving in this direction as a matter of policy. We aren't because no one has figured out a way to turn a profit by doing it.

WATFIV?? I actually learned FORTRAN using a WATFOR compiler -- which was a free standing machine, not a piece of software -- to read my card deck, compile the program, spool it to tape, and batch it to run sometime in the next week whenever the massive IBM 360 mainframe with it's 8K of main memory got around to running student programs [ 8K=65536 individual transistors -- we didn't have integrated circuits ] . As students we were limited to using 2K of that memory for our programs. Turn around time to see if your program would compile was from 4 to 24 hours. Once compiled it took 24 to 72 hours to get the results. I also had the pleasure of programming machine code into processors one nibble at a time using 4 toggle switches. You flipped the switches to set the bottom half of an 8 bit word, pressed the store button, advanced the memory counter 1/2 step, entered the next nibble, and kept going until you died of boredom or the next lab tech came on duty to check your work and soldier on. It really gave you an appreciation for Dr. Grace Hopper and the introduction of the compiler.

she'd say "If you just keep standing there you're gonna take root". She always was ahead of the curve when it came to stuff like this.

How is it we can have several billion dollars worth of Remotely Operated Vehicles running around a mile away from their operators without some effective swarm controller software installed?

I realize that with a dozen ROV's we're probably talking at least half a dozen different operating systems from as many different vendors but it ought to be possible to overlay some basic swarm intelligence onto the top of these bots to keep them out of each others way. It might just increase the efficiency of the operation in the process as the swarm intelligence reallocates tasks based on which bot was nearest to the task, or best equipped, or could travel fastest/safest to transport material.

The gods are gonna be pissed if you offer to toast them a DEAD body as a sacrifice. It's supposed to be a live, fresh body that you toss on the alter and light up if you're trying to impress. And I believe the priests, who have to eat the sacrifice on the god's behalf, prefer that you use the 'dust with meal' method of immolation over the 'set on fire' method. They like to clean and prep their own meals, just for safety.

if you don't know where you are to begin with. I have never in my entire life been lost: I can always determine where I am. There have been a number of times that I couldn't explain how I had come to be where I was (too much alcohol) and many others when I had no clue as to how to get from where I was to where I had intended to be. But I wasn't lost, just disoriented.

But it wouldn't have a very good search engine and the card catalog would always be out of date.

Work is a four letter obscenity, ending in "K", and should never be used in polite company. I generally play with my toys five or six hours a day, do stuff to keep people from yelling at me for another three or four hours, and nap for an hour or two at my desk during the typical day at the office. When it starts to feel like work I pack up and go home. No,wait, I work at home. All I have to do is get up and cross the room and go to bed.

There are thousands. My father almost died from Blastoplasmosis [sp?] which is caused by inhailing a fungus that grows in burls on oak trees. (He was a logger before I was born--the fungus was dormant until I was in my late 30's). For months it looked to be simply a question of which killed him first, the treatments for the infection or the fungus itself. I've also known several people who worked around birds (pet breeders) and poultry farmers who contracted histoplasmosis which is another blood borne fungal infection that can sometimes be controlled but never eliminated entirely.