Everybody who gets an iPhone immediately puts it into a rugged, generally rubberized, case. All smartphones tend to be fragile, and the naked iPhone is slippery. Cases not only protect against damage, but prevent most drops from happening in the first place. An iPhone in a rubbery OtterBox is not going to slip out of your shirt pocket into the toilet.

Just like all the other times, we will have to adapt to the elimination of aging when the time comes. In the good old days before civilization and technology, there was no such thing as grandparenthood. As soon as the longest-lived individuals started to survive plague and war to live that long, we adapted to the new reality.

If it were anything so simple as ozone or baking soda, we would have known it years ago.

My response to those "they're sitting on a cure" conspiracy theorists is that though pharma may be the most powerful lobby in the US, there's a whole world out there. A number of other countries would love the sheer prestige attached to announcing a cure. And even if they gave that treatment away through nationalized health care systems, they would reap huge income from American medical tourists.

I've seen one analysis that estimates that if all medical causes of death were eliminated, we would enjoy an average lifespan of about 650 before some accident would kill us. With a lifetime like that, imagine the tall tales you could tell your descendants. And if, in such a society, the most cautious individuals made it to age 1000, would they get birthday cards from Skynet?

I'm talking about this kind of office: http://thesatellitecenters.com...
where most people are working remotely for different companies, hence less distracting cubicle banter. You're there because the environment is distraction-light compared to home but you have office infrastructure, such as copy machines, and AV equipment.

I'm envisioning a business garment that allows hedge fund managers and corporate lawyers to jump over tall buildings.

Eric Frank Russell had the same criticism, and was far more lighthearted about it.

When you're in a distracting environment where the wife and kids keep demanding attention, your mind will inevitably wander. Working remotely is more practical when you can be in a satellite office, not far from home but still a working environment as opposed to a home environment. If you're seriously taking MOOCs, try this sort of office instead of the house.

And best of all, natural selection will swiftly favor people with your attitude. Those who celebrate death and suffering will go the way of the Neanderthal. Good riddance.

Environmentalists really opposed this kind of mining, especially in such a green place and for such a dirty material, except when it promotes their most current fashion.

From your link:
"Mining in the 48.0 km Garzweiler II sector started in 2006 and it will take until around 2045 to fully exploit both sectors. The lignite is used for power generation at nearby power plants such as Neurath."

This is the "new" part of the mine, used for power requirements from 2008 forward.

As of this moment, half of Germany's nuclear plants are still in operation. Merkel plans to phase them out by 2022. The phased-out plants have been replaced by the world's largest strip mine, Tagebau Garzweiler. The full phase-out will require a new, much larger lignite pit, Tagebau Hambach. When fully developed, it will cover 85 sq km.

The largest renewable energy installation in my state was also the one most bitterly opposed by environmentalists. It was built before renewables became fashionable: http://www.nps.gov/glca/index....

Unfortunately those ARE the goals of environmentalists. Real-world environmental problems, including anthropogenic warming if the science validates it, must be solved by a new breed of pro-human activists.

It would also take come changes in the laws of physics and astronomy. I'm really impressed that Germany has beeb able to do that through subsidies and by using the power of EU's mighty bureaucracy.

I live in a northern Arizona town populated by high-end retirees. I know three (3) people who have installed residential solar to take advantage of our 350 days a year of hard clean sunlight. These people have zeroed out their electricity bills not by going off grid, because the sun sets even in Arizona and July and August have cloudy afternoons. They use the grid as a battery to store excess daytime generated power and draw power at night. I'm sure that Musk Must is not going to disconnect the grid either.