There will always be money. It's the easiest, cheapest thing in the world to make. Hell, you don't even have to print it anymore. What might not be there is the infrastructure to support it though.

That just goes to show you how much value paper money has lost in those years. When the music stops, be sure not to be one of the ones not sitting in a chair!

If enough euros are piled together in one place and zapped with high energy particles, then amazing new mathematics will appear to confuse funding parties even further. I swear... we are SO close! Sustainable fusion is just 20 years away...

So sending a satellite to Mars is the same as nuclear weapons? I'm confused. Anyway, weapons technologies are rarely forgotten. The only constant sound in human history is the beating of the war drum, as they say. But considering the prevalence of nuclear technology on the planet today, I think that one is here to stay too. And I doubt very much that the whole point of the Indian space program is to "scare Pakistan". That's like saying the US is building robotic armed forces to "scare Cuba".

Only one thing is for sure, change is constant, until the heat death of the universe...

No, that's what it was supposed to do. Now it has been subverted. All you need is a few "celebrity scientists" to sit on the board, and presto, you have whatever 'truth' you want to have. Kinda like the US hand picking its supreme court justices, congressional committee members, etc.

As for your other point, I am a scientist myself. Although perhaps a little older, a little wiser, and a little more jaded. Quite a few times now things I have believed to be "accepted fact" all my life turn out to have been some manipulation or other from one or more large research companies. Now I believe that even my beloved science is not as clear cut as it used to be back in my grad student days. The truth belongs to whoever writes the book. Period.

Well one look at the sheep's bladder today, and I knew I was having mutton for dinner.

No, that's how science is supposed to work. Like everything else, nowadays, however, it has become corrupted. Now the only projects that get funded are the ones supporting a particular line of reasoning. Experiments are done without controls, and ad hoc hypotheses created to explain anomalies in the data. Politicians actively suppress researchers who suggest things that contradict doctrine. Oh, and what exactly do you think the "peer review" process is all about? Since when did "peer review" publishing become part of the scientific method? The only "review" one needs is to be able to reproduce the experiment.

I don't trust "scientists" much anymore. Any real progress and truth is hidden by a minefield of deceit, a moat of lies, and battlement upon battlement of patent and copyright lawyers. In the future no doubt humanity will be taken for such a ride by some greedy narcissist that the whole scientific community will be shaken up, ironed out, and we can finally start again making real progress.

Yes. I believe the time tested manner of calming down the sun is via human sacrifice. Quick, build more pyramids!

The support was just as valid as the current support for the warming argument. People were just looking at a different part of the "historical" graph.

Are you that insecure that you must mock the success of your fellow men? India hasn't re-invented anything. They are merely affirming that they too now possess the technology. This is a good thing for mankind as a whole. It helps ensure a technological level of prowess across a broad population which means we as humans are now less likely to "go back" to a pre-space era if anything should happen to the one country that possessed the technology. You know. Kind of like when empires fall and dark ages ensue. Well now even if America collapsed, there is a technology "reservoir", just like there was an intellectual "reservoir" in the middle east when the Western Roman Empire fell.

Latin America style, the slums are mixed in to the "high class" areas. They end up being our maids and security guards, gardeners, waiters and mechanics. Seriously, a $20 chicken breast for lunch is the norm at a restaurant - that's just for the main course. Does not include drinks or 13% tax, nor 10% gratuity. $50 if you want steak. A pizza from Pizza Hut will cost you $26, delivered. A 2 litre bottle of Coke will cost you $3 at the supermarket, more at the convenience store. A Honda Accord will set you back $50k. Land prices are crazy even in the suburbs, and people are now building vertically to offset the cost. There are 10 and 20 storey buildings everywhere when before the tallest building in the country was 12 floors.

We have all the name brands, all the big chains. I moved here 30 years ago and there was nothing. If you wanted something, you had to import it yourself. Now, I only use Amazon and order stuff from the states because I'm too lazy to go shop for stuff, but I can find anything I want. I have to pay 50% tax on everything I import - but then again so does everyone else.

Yeah, the growth has been unbelievable, and it's not cheap to live here anymore. 20 years ago I could go into one of the few "good" restaurants and have a nice steak and a beer for about 8 hours' worth of local minimum wage (maybe $5, just over an hour of minimum wage in the US at the time). Now the same meal will cost me 35 hours' of the local minimum wage - about 7 hours' minimum wage ($50) in the US. But there are restaurants everywhere.

Certainly not the foundation of an economic thesis, but I'm not joking when I say Latin America has boomed, and it's now expensive to live here.

No, the version I am talking about is you probably can't afford to live here.

Oh ok. Yes. I bow to your "you're wrong because soon --- ALIENS ---" argument. You obviously win this round.

Fear comes from within. Others can manipulate people with their own fear, but only if they are fearful people. Things that increase fear: Something new, something sudden and unexpected, vanity. Things that decrease fear - repetition, training, understanding. I could drop a flash bang in the middle of a crowd, and there will be a gauss curve worth of reactions. Most people will panic and run. Some will go hysterical. Others will actually work out what's happening and be calm. The amount of "fear" applied is the same, but individuals express fear differently.