I'm on the plutonium standard. For a valuable hard metal currency it's hard to make and harder to steal.

I guess the previous and curiously titled comment was not supposed to be a troll. Yes, these early adopter mush brains are doomed. However you have to respect their impulse.

We do live in a real 'materialist' universe. The scientific method works. Superstition was thrown into the dustbin four hundred years ago. Some folks can't seem to throw anything away. Philosophic hoarders.

Memes, memories and instincts are encoded in the mammal and lizard neuron networks of our brain. Your personality is the story you tell of yourself.

What happens to a waterfall when the water dries up? The same thing that happens to your personality when you die. The process stops.

Immortality? The closest one gets is in the library. A magnificent invention improved upon by the internet and more to come.

Evolution conserves design. Each moment is all. Experience and enjoy. Continue the attempt to understand the universe we actually inhabit.

I feel threatened by your post... Bang.

The page is available again and I believe that information is represented by following the connections 45 degrees up and to the left in the proposed chart.

This is what happens when you are so frightened by a problem that you make it worse than if you had rationally dealt with it from the beginning. Storing the waste from each plant at the original site near populated areas is the worst case scenario for the dealing with this problem. The opposition to the Yucca Mountain facility has become politically irrational to the point of making impossible demands for it safe for millions of years. Thousands of years is completely feasible and just hundreds of years should be perfectly acceptable. All these by products will eventually be valuable resources to a future technology. It is criminal negligence and a national disgrace to keep these wastes in cooling pools and proposed dry casks at the plants where they were produced. One can only hope that rational decisions can be made in time to avert a self fulfilling disaster. The prospects for this look poor.

>"Of course, we know it's still wrong. Dark matter (probably), dark energy and the incompatibility between the standard model and general relativity means we still don't know what's going on."

No more to be said. After all of the 19th and 20th century's progress and getting the nature of physics down to close to complete accuracy - we find new data that tells us we still haven't a clue as to what's really going on. Great news actually. Totally new paradigms only happen after moments like these. Science rocks on!

I was always an early tech adopter in the 90's, but the rise of the cellphone has given me pause. I understand the benefits of communication in emergency situations but have seen this excuse devolve quickly into cyberspace zombie behavior in public and then private situations. The TV was the first 'hypnotically' attractive communication device but the so called smartphone is orders of magnitude more addictive. Instantaneous access to your person by anyone at any time might not be the greatest of innovations. I do have an iPad and that seems to grant me mobile access to the net and yet some distance from the groundswell of scattershot diversions from inane chatterboxes. - signed Grumpy Old Man - "Get off of my lawn!" ;)

Always was a team player...

Go back and get stepped on and eaten. Go forward and get stepped on but unnoticed. A little back and get locked up for being insane. A little forward and get exhibited as a curiosity. Anyway the speed of light as the arbiter of change is the law. Otherwise everything would have happened all at once at the big bang and how much fun would that have been?

The kindness of strangers...

Kudos, Renaissance man! You got 'em all!

Exactly the point. This is the sort of practical solution that uses extant behavior rather than trying to force change which often fails. An good idea until the local economy affords graduation to composted toilets, etc.

I agree. The Obama plan actually increases the NASA budget and refocuses it on the things NASA does best with the resources it has, like the continued and expanded deep space exploration of the moon and solar system by robotic probes such as the ongoing and currently very successful Mars program and Saturn orbiter. These are the appropriate areas to spend government money to do non-commercial explorations that will lead to actionable knowledge in the future. Support to bring commercial manned LEO space access to reality is also forward looking. At first glance I was disappointed in the new plan but with a little thought I've come to see that this may be the best long range plan we can actually afford to carry out and keep our options open. The Constellation programs were a slow motion disaster.

This aphorism sure gets around. More from www.twainquotes.com/Lies:
A lie can travel halfway round the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.
- This quote has been attributed to Mark Twain, but it has never been verified as originating with Twain. This quote may have originated with Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-92) who attributed it to an old proverb in a sermon delivered on Sunday morning, April 1, 1855. Spurgeon was a celebrated English fundamentalist Baptist preacher. His words were: "A lie will go round the world while truth is pulling its boots on."