Science fiction author "Gennady Stolyarov" isn't listed in Internet Speculative Fiction Database either, and the book's publisher, "Rational Argumentator Press" has a grand total of *one* publication, and its web presence is a section of Mr. Stolyarov's personal site. So what we're dealing with here is the self-published work by an unpublished crank sci-fi author -- not that there's any dishonor in being an unpublished crank sci-fi author. There's lots of us around.

I peeked inside the book, and what strikes me is that if you squint, this *looks* like a religious tract pitched toward children, right down to the colorful but stiff illustrations. Take a look at the cover, with it's child dressed in a blue oxford shirt, red tie and khaki chinos banishing death. This is peculiar, in a way that I applaud; an image pitched at children by someone so far out of the mainstream that she has no idea what a culturally "normal" child looks like. That's a good thing for the world, although it may not do much for the author's message. It's more important for people with an oddball streak to write books than people who think like everyone else.

This book appears to come out of the same impetus that underlies a lot of religious impulse: rage at the fact we're are going to die. It's a fact we *should* be uncomfortable with. Religion does the most damage when it makes us too comfortable with the prospect of death. The afterlife becomes a make-up session where we can do the things we put off line life like reconciling with estranged loved ones.

Anyone who regards speculation about technological singularity enabling indefinite human life extension as a "promise" is taking far too much comfort in what is, at best, an intriguing idea. But the universe itself has a finite lifespan; any being who could last to the heat death of the universe, or even a single 2 million century "galactic year" would be so far from human that calling it "transhuman" would be like calling ourselves "transprotozoans".

Whether we just disappear after a mere century or so, or survive as something unrecognizable as human, our opportunity to experience the universe as ourselves, as humans, is brief. We should make the most of it, no matter what we plan to leave behind when our human existence is done.

Well, that's better than your first post anyway

I'll have to keep this short as its late..1.-Yes, in fact not 3 hours from me is a KKK compound and they have their marches and white power picnics and nobody cares. The closest thing you get to "censoring" is the fact that the media doesn't care enough to show up but if the viewers don't care neither does the media.

2- The USA is the size of the EU so you will ALWAYS have a few "gangbangers with badges" somewhere that will act like Brownshirts. I'm sure those protesters got a big ass check after they got done suing while the brownshirts are working as mall cops.

3.-As far as "legalizes lying" I'd say the UK has that done pat thanks to their libel laws, look at how nobody would say shit about the Top Of The Pops DJ being a Pedo until AFTER he had died, even though they knew as early as 1971. And it isn't like its trivially easy to fight back thanks to the net but call me crazy, I'd rather not have a world where rich pervs like Jimmy can do what they want because the press is afraid to say boo.

4.-As for Faux News...I guess you missed the memo because not only is Fox News missing the mark but they are bleeding the right wing dry by making them out to be the "rich old white people party" and thus showing that yes free speech works because people WILL see through the bullshit in time.

No shit?

Honestly, your comment is disappointing. Why? Because you didn't even read the paper, instead of possibly enlightening yourself by reading the paper you word-vomited empty thoughts into your browser. You can do better.

Those are some interesting points. Also, thanks for actually reading the paper.

No actually, I'd be interested in hearing a rebuttal to his point, instead of empty mockery.

How about, "when they start noticing it hurting them?" People didn't care about VB6 lock-in until Microsoft discontinued it. Then they began to distance themselves from Microsoft.

People will start caring about Facebook when they realize all their photos are on there and everyone is switching to a different site.

The levels of dishonesty are deep.

I probably am. Thanks for the tip.

Yeah but Steam sales mean we PC gamers really don't have to care and with AMD chips going so cheap you can build nice gaming PCs for a little of nothing. My oldest has a hexacore with 8Gb of RAM and a TB HDD and it only cost $350 shipped, add in another $70 for his HD7750 and he can play pretty much any shooter he cares to play. the youngest decided to go for a quad and spend the extra for an HD7790 and everything is smooth even with the bling cranked.

So who cares if you have to get more than 1 copy? Thanks to steam we only have to download it once and then just copy the folder to the other 2 PCs and between Steam sales, Humble Bundles, and FTP games we literally have more new games to play than we have hours in the day and as a nice bonus you have a system that will play console games going back to the Atari 2600, PC games going back to DOS, and of course web, video, hell you can even get your work done on it ;-)

Oh and if you don't want to even spend that much? head over to Craigslist, plenty of Phenom Is and IIs and C2Qs being sold for cheap. Had a friend that wanted to get into PC gaming but money was tight, found him a nice C2Q system with 19 LCD and KM for just $130, he slapped in an HD6770 he found for $35 and is happily flying his WWII airplanes.

Facebook isn't a social meeting place, it's a communications platform that also happens to let you hang a sign on the door that everyone can see.

That's why they bought whatsapp, that's why they have all of the various tools to send and archive messages and to let you carve up the 'social space' of who you talk to.

There are lots of shady things they are up to as well,

>Why do we allow this with our social networks?"

Whey do we let countries control their TLD's and phone exchanges and physical mail system? You don't have to use facebook to talk to anybody, there are other forms of communication. But if you want to use the facebook communication system then you have to use Facebook. If it becomes big enough, important enough and persistent enough then the government will step in to regulate it. But it's also possible facebook will go the way of the dodo bird in a couple of years when people get sick of all the stuff facebook ends up doing to try and make money.

You think the world before the industrial revolution is the carrying capacity of earth? You don't think new plant varieties and alternative organic production methods make any difference?

That's kind of hilarious