50 years from now, what's going to happen is what Klaatu says in the latest Earth stood still movie: "It would come at a price, to you and your way of life."

Only the very wealthy will be able to live in the suburbs,

Or alternately the very poor, as in an age where oil is expensive, walking a few feet to the grocery store, versus a few miles, would come at a premium.

Envision a poorer version of Amsterdam all across the world. People bicycling every where.

I was just thinking about this. From every aspect of society, it was all a fraud.

Investment banks weren't actually increasing wealth, $100mil sports stars were on steroids, people buying plasma screens with home equaity loans on houses who's price was artificially inflated.

The WMD in Iraq; the response to Katrina; 'Mission Accomplished' it was all manufactured or illusory.

But not only for the last 8 years, but really the last 30.

Reagonimics was a joke. The dotcom bubble was, to a large extent, based on illusion. The illusion that you can make money out of nothing. Then it was the illusion that housing prices only go up, even if the rate they're going up is caused by speculation.

So yes, i thinkin we're in for some serious reckoning during the next couple of years.

it's all speculation as to how she got pregnant. Why would you jump to the conclusion that she was raped. Usually there are only female guards at a female prison, any males would be visitors of inmates, and lawyers and such. This is someone who was smuggling heroin--she could have equally been turning tricks in the prison. You don't know.

...think of Jabba the Hutt when you saw her face?

Shame on you if you did!

for Tim & Eric?

I had no idea what child Spock was talking about. I thought it might have been philosophy or something.

When you say "[i]n these times of economic disarray and incredible environmental threats and devastating energy constraints...(where do we find the dilithium crystals that power everything, after all?)"

The answer, I suspect, lies in as yet undiscovered fundamental laws of physics which would allow us to exploit energy in quantities which are orders of magnitude more than we can access now. (There is more energy in a drop of water, in terms of the subatomic bonds that hold the molecules together, than what you can get from burning a barrel of oil)

Famed physicist Freeman Dyson noted that every human technological civilization has constantly increased its demand for energy. He reasoned that if human civilization were to survive long enough, there would come a time when it would require the total energy output of the sun.

And frankly, I don't see how a future like "Star Trek" can come about from burning hydrocarbons.

"With apologies to the open-source movement, I don't see how people are going to be able to dedicate their time and effort to developing stuff if it's just going to be free for anyone to use."

Because the software developers will be paid much in the same way that high-way repair workers are paid today.

Open source software works because there are ancillary benefits that it provides it's users such as greater stability and security, aside from the direct benefit of it being free.

Developers release their code for free because they realize savings from not having to purchase anti-virus software or pay $300 for an OS.

I suspect that in the future companies will pay software developers to patch and maintain their code and release those changes to the public, because the company makes its revenue elsewhere, yet they realize cost-savings from use of that open-source software.

Think about highways. If no one maintained highways they would soon be filled with cracks and potholes and driving would be very dangerous. Yet because highways don't generate any significant amount of revenue, a company that did solely highway repair wouldn't be very profitable.

That's why we pay for highway repair through taxes, because well-maintained highways benefit all of us.

Renaissance fairs were such a magnet for poon?

But as to your point of protecting boys from the "dangers" of the internet, it's just not the same.

A heterosexual teenage boy is basically a walking penis.

you'd have to pay him NOT to look at porn.

And let's be honest, when a 15yo fucks a hot 23yo girl (GIRL. not woman--I haven't met an American woman who was under 35) it's not exactly abuse. I mean, it might be reckless in the same way that giving that same 15yo the keys to a Ferrari is reckless, but it's not abuse.

Now if the woman is 50 and the boy is 10, then it's abuse.

So, if anything it's women who should be protected from the advances of teenage boys on the Internet, not the other way around.

And really what would the boys avatar look like like--some guido tool with a sixpack? Yeah, that'll invite inappropriate comments.

You would think that with sophisticated GPS tracking systems available, every airline would know exactly where each of its planes is at all times.

Hell, walmart employs satellite tracking for its trucks for just this purpose.

So why not a $10mil airplane? Moreover, you would think that by now, airlines would have implemented some sort of live video/audio feed for the airplane cockpits, even if only to keep track of their employees. No airplane should be "lost" in 2009.

As to why the pilots barreled through the storm, maybe they were suffering from "get-there-itis", which is what happens when pilots try to rush to get to their destination.

Such was the case for AA Flight 1420 on June 1, 1999.

The pilots, facing a severe storm when landing at the airport , where in a rush to land and neglected to follow landing procedure. This resulted in them sliding off the runway. Ten of the 139 passengers died.