I think they may be peaceful and wise and decide we could become a threat to them given enough time to advance. So they may attempt to educate us--change our culture to something more peaceful. They may also rule us for a while so that they can get rid of the more violent and crazy religions, rework how we choose leaders so that sociopaths don't tend to rise to the top of business and government. Probably some form of genetic engineering to make our moods more peaceful by default. Although the changes would be unpopular with many earthlings, I think the aliens might see their heavy handed interference as superior to the alternative of extermination.

Fascinating, my first thought was that art is something that evokes emotion in the person meditating upon it. It doesn't even require an artist. If a sunset makes you feel emotions then it is art for you. But maybe by thinking about the sunset in such a way that it makes you feel something, you become the artist? Maybe the professional artists' job is to create things that facilitate an observer's ability to think in ways that evoke emotion?

Perhaps Roger Ebert is so lacking in artistic ability, he can not do the type of thinking required to experience a game as art so for him it isn't art. So what? Or maybe, he is just trying to dump his morality on us--winning is bad? If so, perhaps his criticism is art since it makes me feel like telling him to STFU.

Maybe I don't know what art is, but I feel strongly that video games can be art. I have been moved by World of Warcraft so I feel it is art.

Yes, when did /. turn into Fox News or the National Enquirer? I'm sick of news that titillates the reader's basest emotions in order to sell their rag because the org lacks the competence to sell honest news.

I think you are making at least four faulty assumptions which affect the economics. First, asteroids are not made of one element but many so the supply of new resources would go into multiple markets. Second, harvesting those materials wouldn't be instantaneous, might take decades. Third, the bulk of stuff we could get from an asteroid might be most valuable if kept in space--iron, nickel, hydrocarbons useful for making space habitats that don't have to be hauled up from earth's gravity well. Fourth, whoever mines the asteroids might do what De Beers does with diamonds--sell slowly to keep the prices inflated.

I agree that environment is very important. If the environment would cause a bad trip, working in it will wear on you. I work in an big house that has the feel of a home. Teams more-or-less occupy the same rooms. It makes communication efficient between team members and does foster a sense of community and camaraderie.

On the other hand, too much talking can get really annoying when you're coding. So I wish there were a room dedicated to long conversations--some couches, food, and computers. Personal phone calls and meetings with clients should also take place there.

Also because intense coding uses a lot of working memory which is hard to remember between interruptions, there need to be some rules of etiquette about when it is okay to interrupt. There are few things worse than forgetting the details of a complicated solution because someone interrupted the thought to ask you about an entirely different code module.

I also like well behaved pets in the workplace. Several times it has helped me to talk problems out with someone's dog, and they also help reduce stress.

Usually we all get a say in hiring new employees. That seems to weed out the ones who would ruin the sense of community.

I think the same principles could be applied to a larger company by applying them to a team instead of to the whole company.

If you find a balloon, hide it and talk the people accompanying it into splitting the prize with you. Wait until the locations of the other balloons leaks. Collect prize. If people accompanying it won't play, kidnap them.

How do you suppose hospitals cover the cost of treating the uninsured?

Sorry, maybe I did overstate things. This is just a very emotional subject for me as you can probably understand. However, if you read this and other articles like it, can we agree the Prozac fad of the 1990's was overblown?

I took Prozac and other SSRIs. They had absolutely no positive effect on my depression. Instead I got little blistering bumps on my skin that itched like mad and lasted for months and all of the usual sexual side effects. Worse, they gave me a flat affect and occasional visual hallucinations upon waking up in the morning, which got me a misdiagnoses of schizophrenia which lead to me having to drop out of college due to the side effects of the schizophrenia medications (which incidentally did nothing for the flat affect or hallucinations.)

At one point a doctor made me abruptly quit the SSRI I was on. That seemed to lead to the worst depression I have ever experienced. The hallucinations stopped. The doctor put me on a different SSRI.

I ended up gradually weaning myself off of all of the drugs almost a decade ago. I haven't had schizophrenia-like symptoms since. Doctors since then agree I was misdiagnosed and just had an unexpected reaction to SSRIs.

My guess is that SSRIs seem to work mostly due to the placebo effect. Anything beyond the placebo effect is due to some people having just the right kind of depression that can benefit from what SSRIs do. When I quit the SSRIs cold turkey, I believe that rebound depression was of the neurochemical type that SSRIs can successfully treat. In other words, I think there are probably many biological causes of depression and SSRIs only treat one cause. For some, like me, SSRIs just throw our neuro-chemistry way out of wack by overstimulating parts of the seratoninergic neurotransmitter system.

In my opinion, sloppy science or fraud allowed SSRIs to get FDA approval as a treatment for many kinds of depression when it only really treats a subtype of depression. That lead to those drugs being promoted as a panacea for everything from major depression to just not being cheerful all the time. It cost me the education and career and better life I wanted and otherwise would have had. While massaging of data might sound like a faux pas to a non-scientist, it can have tragic consequences.

I think it is time to stop giving special status to delusions such as Scientology and Christianity. In the USA churches are tax exempt. Church businesses should pay a "sin tax," a higher than normal tax rate, the way tobacco is taxed because it too is harmful. It should also be illegal to give children religion just as it is illegal to sell a child a carton of cigarettes to smoke. Many parents actually force children to attend brainwashing events one to three times a week at their local church. That is just plain sick.

So fix the programming bug through genetic engineering. The tendency toward peace already seems to exist so it probably only needs to be enhanced a little so that we can more easily override our skull crushing tendencies.

Solution probably also is possible via uploading our mental software to non-brain computer hardware and redesigning the relevant code. That is probably a little further into the future though.

Both are probably easier to achieve than FTL travel.

Once upon a time I tried LSD. I would say it was the most profound experience of my life. The guy who went down the rabbit hole isn't quite the same guy who came out 12 hours later.

Good changes in no particular order:

• Increased self esteem because I saw past all the layers of garbage people told me about me, down to who I really am.
• Increased love and empathy for people and all life
• A better understanding of what makes people tick
• A nice feeling of interconnectedness with the universe
• Possible insights into how the brain works
• Was horrible at arithmetic but now I can multiply any two three digit numbers in my head.
• Many personal psychological insights
• Made me much more liberal
• I see many sides to issues now rather than just the ones I was conditioned to see.
• Improved artistic talent and computer coding abilities
• More in touch with my aesthetic sense
• Went from atheist to Buddhist atheist.
• Curious ability to make myself feel good even when things are going badly. The same ability also seems to get rid of headaches.
• Put a lot of childhood abuse behind me
• More varied imagination

Not so good stuff:

• I have difficulty putting on a persona when the situation (arguably) calls for one. They seem too fake and insincere for me to stomach now.
• More awareness of others' psychology which sometimes feels like an invasion of their privacy.
• Occasional emotions of being trapped in a tight place... difficult to explain. I think it has something to do with an incomplete rebirth I experienced as the drug was wearing off, got stuck in the birth canal and stayed there while returning to consensual reality. Maybe I should go to Mexico to finish being born again:-)

Overall, I think the world would be a better place if most people tried LSD at least once, providing they spent months of their free time learning all they could about LSD before using it and used it in a safe environment in a responsible way.

Hands

It was a brilliant idea to put them on the ends of my arms because they can reach most other body parts that way. I'm thankful that the Flying Spaghetti Monster came up with that bit of intelligent design.

I agree that libraries are wonderful places, temples of knowledge, one of the very few things I hold sacred. I love printed books. They are sensuous right down to their spicy scent between their leathery leaves. I have not yet been able to imagine the Internet providing the full sensory experience I get from books. Maybe in time...

However, it pains me that Mr. Bradbury, one of my all time favorite authors, has allowed himself to stop growing. I think it is very likely that some people reading this will never die unless they choose to. Imagine living to be 20,000 years old and hating whatever newfangled things replace the Internet, hating pretty much everything about the world because it has changed and you have not. Human history is tiny, the future potentially vast; why confine yourself to some small region of the past and let history race by you into the future?

I was just listening to something a little old, Alexander Scriabin's 2nd symphony. A month ago, I never even heard of Scriabin. I found him on the Internet and now have his music. I doubt I would have found him at the local library. Now I'm listening to Shpongle which is kind of new (2005) and goes shockingly well with mushroom soup and strolls through mossy eldritch forests as well as with computer programming. I wouldn't have found Shpongle at the library either. This Fall I hope to share my home with an 18 year old college student for the simple reason that she will bring novelty--both modern youth culture and her tribal culture which is completely and wonderfully alien to me. That's how I try to live, always throwing something new into the old brain pan so it never goes empty.

Now if you'll excuse me, my head feels like a Frisbee...