AdamSmith

PS I for one miss TampaYankee's voice in these palavers.

It could also be that higher sea levels will suck up oxygen, as H2O does by its extremely reactive nature? I (chemist manque) don't know, but it seems likely. When physical nature can conspire against our interests, it usually will. Thus the astounding wonder that evolution overcame nature to bring us even this far.

Only that, again as ever, Stanley was one of those intellects unparalleled. http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3c_dOMVXRhw

Actually what they tend to have is a body that sweats and emits piss and poop and you have not learned how to love those aspects of the human condition. You know Eastern much more than Western spiritual tradition and efforts to know the human condition accept those realities and integrate them. That they give you all this trouble is truly a paradox.

Will it even ever be possible not to?

Suckrates, wonder how old is your colleague? I ask because when living in NYC, I saw a lot of fatalism and it'll-get-me-sooner-or-later in guys younger than 30, even more in those under 25. I say in NYC because when living in Boston before that, I very seldom saw that attitude in young guys.

Charlie, that may be the Best Post Ever Here (or There, or Anywhere). (In my end is my beginning. ) (Etc.) With just one little reservation: Chelsea is a wonderful fulfillment of the human potential, except she has thus far shown an (admirable, arguably, though I would not make that argument) lack of the raw political animal passion that even yet drives both of her parents.

I don't much like Elizabeth Drew at all but this is reasonably interesting and even-handed: http://m.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/elizabeth-drews-washington-from-covering-nixon-to-making-new-friends-on-twitter/2014/05/14/751e7daa-dac5-11e3-bda1-9b46b2066796_story.html?tid=pm_lifestyle_pop

Mein Fuehrer, I can walk!

I know people individually in Huntsville who welcomed and still hold close in heart the dear Dr Von Braun.

"Do you still think you can control them?"

No axe to grind on my part. Just wonder what in particular you disagree with the Gates Foundation on?

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=29Mg6Gfh9Co

Fairly trenchant dissection of the contemporary art market. http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/may/14/christies-sale-art-auction-bubble

Mine died when I was 8. This is a wonderful notion.

The Taking of Snowden 1-2-3: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/11/glenn-greenwald-nsa-whistleblower-edward-snowden-book

Greenwald portrait of Snowden: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/11/glenn-greenwald-nsa-whistleblower-edward-snowden-book

Extraordinary personal portrait of Greenwald: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/12/glenn-greenwald-uk-arrest-me-edward-snowden-nsa

Mein Kommandant, ve must have verisimilitude! Defining which is of course the prime challenge of SF as a genre.

You raise one of the great points: Does the future already exist? As for example the great Dark Shadows 1995 flash-forward storyline. http://darkshadows.wikia.com/wiki/Category:1995_Characters

P.S. Then what you are really talking about is not time travel but rather a time-viewing technology, as in Clarke and Baxter's The Light of Other Days. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Light_of_Other_Days

Well, OK, but then only a bit eviscerated gedankenexperiment, nein? One sort of wants the whole hog, or nothing.

But the conundrum that jumping around in time alters it. Cf., among many, Fritz Leiber's Nebula-winner The Big Time. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Time

ROFL "Would that be a hot date, or a stewed prune?"

Would you date several of 'em together?