Yeah, this is a pretty pointless article, and the same stuff is talked about in every CIA TV documentary and news article anyway.

I am not an atheist, just practical. While I personally believe we'll get our acts together and get the technology to prevent most major extinction events before they happen (such as large asteroids, and even climate change), eventually our sun will expand and burn away all life on Earth. I see no reason why life on Earth should just accept its extinction lying down. There won't be any humans around, as we would recognize humans, but whatever our descendants look like, I'd like to hope they've gotten off the planet long before that happens, and brought along plenty of other Earthlings with them.

This century, we have the ability to get at least some of our eggs out of this one basket. Over the coming millennium, I expect we will be able to travel to other solar systems in generational ships. I happen to believe life is sacred. Shouldn't we try to preserve it for as long as we can?

Redundancy, and 3D printers that can make all the parts for new 3D printers. Even if two of your three printers fail, use the third to build two more and hopefully the two that fail can be cannibalized for spare parts enough to build a complete working model.

Or build those parts to begin with. Especially when we start colonizing outside our solar system, being able to pack solid containers of materials as densely as possible and then building everything when we get there, is going to be critical to keeping weight down by nature of requiring less packaging. A big cube of metal is a lot cheaper to ship than several large metal machines.

http://www.space.com/27211-made-in-space-3d-printer.html/

It's ABS, and quite small. It's more for testing than anything else, but they say they intend to print functional items rather than just toys.

I'm not sure if you should be modded Funny or Insightful.

With the UK likely going to pull out of the EU, anyway (one of the issues talked about by the Yes voters in Scotland is that the UK is leaning that way), I don't imagine the EU will be all that long-lived, regardless of how Scotland votes tonight and the consequences of that vote.

I would personally love to see them tell the queen to stick it, but unfortunately even if the Scottish vote to be independent of the UK, they'll still have a monarch.

Whether they eventually choose to ditch the old leech is an entirely different issue, though I personally hope they'll be emboldened by a Yes vote today and end up with a nice constitutional republic.

Also, with regards to corruption and such, isn't that sort of why Scotland wants to dump Westminster?

That's not actually that clear. The UK is a member of NATO, for example, not Scotland, England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. If Scotland leaves the UK, it's no longer part of NATO.

Of course, the day after the vote, Scotland doesn't just become a separate country. It's going to be quite some time before Scotland actually becomes independent. The intervening months/years will give Scotland time to form alliances and establish its own separate defenses.

Scotland won't be losing their queen by breaking away from the UK.

It would be a disaster short-term, mainly because of hurt feelings on both sides getting in the way of logical business and political decisions. Medium-term, it'll be more a disaster for the remaining UK than Scotland. Long-term, I think everyone will muddle through and figure out how to make things work. Scotland and the UK will not be as strong on the international stage separated from each other than they were together, but that was the trend all throughout Europe anyway, wasn't it?

Certainly Scotland will have some growing pains, and need to figure out how to actually govern themselves, and see what they can actually afford to do. The UK will likely need to cut back quite a bit on the government they have, but their government is likely to swing Tory anyway. The UK may very well drop out of the EU without the Scotland vote, and Scotland is by no means guaranteed to be admitted into the EU, by themselves.

I cannot speak to internal Scottish politics or corruption post-independence, but I don't imagine these young kids who voted for independence will be that forgiving of such things in the wake of all this.

It's close to 50-50 now, but the younger generations are far more in favor of independence than the older generations. This is one problem that will be solved by the swift march of time.

Well unfortunately, these last-minute promises to Scotland to bribe them into staying with the union seem to many to be too little, too late. After so many problems for so many years, why should Scotland believe these new promises? They've been promised things before, and the fact this vote is now so close is proof those other promises haven't been delivered on.

If the vote does end up going No, there's still going to be a lot of serious repercussions, and I would expect another vote in another 5-10 years that goes Yes.

Pretty much everyone involved has made this bed, and now they're gonna have to sleep in it. I think long-term an independent Scotland will be just fine. A UK without Scotland may not be in great shape, though.

Certainly we're in for some interesting times, regardless of what happens today.

Unfortunately many voting Yes today in Scotland are doing so with the understanding that they can still use the same currency (controlled by others) as they do now, and that is far from certain, and you and I would both argue it's far from desirable. The future is far less certain than many Scots think, if they do win their independence today. I wouldn't discourage these people from voting Yes, despite their idealism, but there does seem to be a lot of politicians saying "don't worry about it." Reality is a bit more complicated.

Anyway, fascinating times we live in. I expect the economic situation to get very, very messy short term, and the political situation on the British Isles will get really screwy for a good long while. Democracy is a messy, imperfect thing, but I think the Scots are better off having it than not. Their screw-ups will at least be their own, instead of London's.